Enemies at Home: Falco: The New Generation - Flavia Albia 2 Read online

  A married woman even though still young, she spoke forcefully and with obvious annoyance, but Galla had brought her up to treat slaves politely. Simplicia clearly knew Myla, and made no threat of punishment.

  Truculent but mute, Myla lifted the child, then took her out of the kitchen.

  ‘You can go!’ snapped Simplicia at Cosmus. She seemed to know him too. From her tone, she may have been afraid he would refuse her instructions.

  He ambled off, but that was because I added sharply, ‘Get lost, Cosmus!’

  Simplicia dropped onto a stool and momentarily covered her face with her hands as if things were all too much.

  I sat down with her. ‘Do you mind if we talk?’

  Simplicia raised her head, rocking the cradle absent-mindedly with one narrow foot, perhaps unconsciously reclaiming the heirloom. I said what I wanted to ask was delicate and I particularly hoped to spare her mother. That gave the daughter an excuse to speak frankly, if she needed one.

  ‘Can you tell me about your father’s relationship with Myla?’

  Her mouth tightened and she gazed fixedly at a pot on the hearth. ‘She was there, she was available, he slept with her.’ Her voice was tight; it obviously rankled. I waited. ‘There was never anything to it, other than he was the master and she was his slave.’

  I reassured her quietly. ‘This happens everywhere.’ As the young woman remained frowning and silent, I went on, ‘I am not condoning it, but men who own slaves, and women too, presume that is what the slaves are there for. A condition of slavery is to be used for sexual purposes. Masters have the right to do it. Slaves have no right to say no.’

  Simplicia relaxed, heaving a large sigh. ‘She accepted it. My father was head of the household so she thought it made her better than the rest.’

  ‘He only slept with Myla?’

  ‘He was a man of habit.’

  ‘Excuse me if this is painful, but did it have any bearing on why your parents divorced all those years ago?’

  ‘None at all. My mother would not have stood for it, but that is irrelevant, Flavia Albia. It happened later.’

  I nodded. I could see the situation. Aviola liked things easy. Set up a routine, so he did not have to think about it: answered his correspondence, ate his supper, had intercourse with his usual slave. All matter-of-fact, because he was the master and he owned the slave to provide whatever he needed: offer a napkin, hand him ripe fruit, lie down on her back – or her front, or stand up, or kneel for him. He did not even bother to go out and buy someone beautiful or skilled in exotic practices. He used the house girl.

  It was more than possible his father had used Myla’s mother the same way.

  So, when he wanted relief, Valerius Aviola called Myla in, screwed her, then dismissed her. He wouldn’t have made conversation. He would dislike her offering endearments. If she was moody because of her period, he could give her a slap if he wanted. When she was too pregnant, he could go out and have himself professionally serviced, then he could openly complain about the cost.

  It makes you wonder why anybody gets married. The man never had to remember her birthday or listen to her endlessly dissecting what some inane friend of hers said yesterday.

  To spare Simplicia, I myself established basic facts: Aviola and Galla were divorced for many years. After they split, he started to sleep with Myla. It was a regular occurrence and she bore him children. He did not formally acknowledge the children. They were sold elsewhere while young. Myla had said she had borne ‘several’ and they were now ‘gone’. Then one day Aviola chose to remarry. It had no implications for him, but was bound to affect her. Superfluous, she lost her special position. She was supposed to return to being a bowl-bringer and pot-watcher.

  I decided not to offend Simplicia by trying to probe what kind of person her father was. Hardly the worst sexual predator. People he knew spoke of Mucia and him as a likeable couple. He must have possessed some charm. Mucia wanted the full joys of marriage with him.

  I reckoned that his ex-wife and children knew what went on but were able to ignore it. Whenever the children saw him, he may have been discreet. But it was his right. They too had to put up with it. From his point of view it was perfectly acceptable, much better than, say, adultery with someone they knew socially. Sex with a slave did not count.

  For Myla it did count but who cared about that?

  ‘Inevitably your father’s new marriage meant change. You said your mother would not have permitted a liaison − nor would Mucia Lucilia, I imagine. Your mother and Mucia had been friends; I imagine they were women of a like mind. We can say, when your father married, Myla had no further use and was a menace to his new wife?’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘But Myla would not accept her demotion?’

  ‘She was being very difficult.’ That would be the problem a wife had to address. She could not have a slave undermining her position. A slave who made demands or harboured expectations. Mucia Lucilia may have been surreptitious with her redecoration plans in the apartment, but for her Myla had to go. Hermes, Mucia’s freedman, claimed she was always diplomatic, but I wondered.

  ‘Mucia Lucilia saw what had been going on.’ I wondered if Galla even warned her about it. ‘Mucia was no meek young bride, but a woman who knew she had to pre-empt trouble. She insisted that Myla be sold? I am guessing your father agreed, yet found it hard to tell Myla? I expect he wanted Polycarpus to break the bad news.’

  ‘No.’ Simplicia was quiet. ‘He told her. My father had made it plain to Myla what was to happen.’

  You could see that as decent honesty – or a cold attitude.

  ‘Did Myla believe him?’

  ‘Not really. The woman is impossible … Yes, Flavia Albia, she was upset. We all knew that, and we are not vicious; we understood. She was verna, born to a slave of ours long ago; she had never been anywhere else and was terrified. I do not blame her feelings, yet she should have seen the position, her own position, my father’s, my new stepmother’s. If she had behaved modestly, shown she was willing to carry out her duties as a general maid, it might have been feasible to keep her in one of our houses. Instead, she was rude, she was belligerent—’

  ‘And she was carrying another child,’ I said. ‘Did your father, more than reasonably some would say, agree nothing should happen until this baby was born?’

  ‘He was a decent man.’ His daughter fought a sudden rush of tears.

  She was a decent girl – even though she had just evicted her baby half-sister from the family cradle for having the bad fortune to be born to a slave.

  43

  A change in the activity out in the courtyard signalled that people were leaving. Simplicia stood up and went to rejoin her relatives. She said no farewell to me, simply inclined her head and walked out. In a way, this chit of nineteen treated me with less respect than she gave her father’s slave.

  It was a familiar experience. I might be a free citizen, a widow and ten years her senior, but I worked. For many people that put me down at the level of bar staff and public entertainers. To girls like Simplicia, I was practically illegal.

  I, too, returned to the courtyard. Most people had gone and the last stragglers were disappearing. Gratus had everything swept up, put away, taken out to a mule in no time. His staff carried off food hampers and baskets of tableware. He came and said goodbye to me.

  ‘These were here – shall I leave them out or put them indoors?’

  He meant the two chairs. I said he could leave them. I had lost any sense of responsibility towards this apartment and its contents. ‘You are very observant, Gratus. The ungrateful Simplicii don’t deserve you. If I can think of anyone I know who needs a good steward, I shall put in a word on your behalf.’

  I could try leaning on my parents; they collected waifs, though they probably had enough already. Another possibility might be Manlius Faustus, though his uncle, who ran their household, was a slightly unknown quantity. Uncle Tullius had bought Dromo, for one thing.<
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  I shook hands with the steward and on Graecina’s behalf thanked him for his attention to everything today.

  The last person to leave was Sextus Simplicius. He told me he would like to know as soon as the investigation was closed. He was eager to close up the apartment, sell the contents and terminate its lease. That was more urgent now Polycarpus was not around, though Simplicius had asked Graecina to keep an eye out, temporarily. She must have seen how her husband ran things. I made a mental note to suggest to her becoming a concierge as a way of earning. Another good deed for the unfortunates I had met in the course of the case.

  ‘I gather,’ I said to him, ‘you are ready to sell off the slaves?’

  ‘Any who survive your enquiries without being executed!’ Sextus Simplicius agreed. ‘Not to mention you-know-who.’

  Indeed, he did not mention Myla by name but I noticed she was lurking in a colonnade again and heard him.

  Since funerals are night-time events, it was now very late. Dromo was pointedly ‘asleep’ on his mat. Fake snores made it clear he was not intending to take a report to Faustus now – not that I would have sent him out on his own in the dark.

  Despite the time, as soon as Simplicius left I called out to Myla. She would have been able to tell from my tone there was no point in playing deaf. So she shuffled up at her own slow pace, complaining rudely, ‘I was going to bed!’

  ‘So am I in a minute,’ I retorted, not letting her see how she vexed me. ‘This cannot wait. I want a serious chat with you.’

  Analysing how I felt towards Myla, I could not decide whether I was sorry for her plight or simply felt too much distaste – not distaste for what she had done with Aviola, where she had no choice, but for the attitude she adopted in consequence. I had noticed her looking hopefully at other men who might take her on. I despise women who rely on men entirely for their own existence. I like men, never think otherwise. Today, seemingly hours ago, I had kissed one with memorable pleasure. But a woman should keep her self-respect – because if she does not, men will all too easily lose their respect for her.

  I had had a few moments to think through my new information.

  ‘I have been hearing about how things were here, Myla. I know this household looked good on the surface but there were all kinds of jealousies and bad feeling. It is the same in many houses in Rome; some are far worse. But here a master and his bride were murdered.’

  I saw Myla’s face set. As faces go, hers would have been acceptable but it was ruined by her constant surly expression. Perhaps she kept a better one for Aviola.

  Perhaps he was not interested in her face.

  If I wanted to be generous, I could say it was possible the very way he had made use of her over the years accounted for her graceless manner. She may not always have been so miserable with the world.

  ‘I am intrigued,’ I told her. ‘All those slaves who went to the Temple of Ceres, the slaves who are accused of the murders, had little reason to have turned on their master. Whereas you, Myla, have managed to be excluded from the investigation even though you had a big motive.’

  Myla still said nothing, though she had been vocal enough when she argued with the Simplicii. She stared at me truculently, and I knew why. There was nothing she could do about me. She ogled men who came here, presumably hoping to gain their protection in the limited way at her disposal. I was a woman. I was an enemy over whom she had no power.

  ‘You know you are shortly going to the slave market. You were already listed for sale, before your master died. This may be your last chance, Myla. If your master had led you to believe something different, now is the time to tell me.’

  When she yelled at Valerius Junior, Myla was bursting with grievances. Even though he was a young man with limited experience, Valerius saw trouble coming and immediately walked away. I would listen to her grudges, but I think she knew I would not respond in the way she wanted.

  ‘I was promised my freedom,’ Myla declared.

  ‘Did he say that exactly?’

  ‘It was understood.’

  ‘Ah, that tricky situation! Almost certainly not understood by Aviola … I hope you were not expecting him to honour unspoken promises, Myla?’ She seemed silly enough.

  ‘Yes I was! I was going to be a freedwoman and then he would have married me. He was just waiting for the right time.’

  ‘Oh, Myla! And while he was waiting for this mythic moment, he happens to have married someone else?’ I did not believe Valerius Aviola ever made such a promise to Myla, or even hinted. I knew too much about the kind of women he chose as his wives; this slave was not what he wanted. Possibly Myla raised the issue and he avoided answering. Perhaps he answered bluntly but she would not listen. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. After so many years of you being a convenience, why had he never changed things before? Myla, you were fooling yourself.’

  ‘No! He said this baby would be born free.’

  ‘Did he really say that, or was it just what you wanted? I think you convinced yourself of something he never intended. If he had, he left the formalities dangerously late.’

  A child follows the condition of its mother; when Myla gave birth as a slave, her daughter was a slave too. Many people take a lax attitude to this rule, but it is asking for legal problems in future. Of course many lawyers earn a good living from that. Informers too, frankly.

  ‘That was the wife, stopping him,’ Myla claimed. ‘The wife thought she had got rid of me, but she was wrong. I never would have gone away.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Myla, I think you would have done – but in any case you will be sold now.’

  ‘I won’t go!’

  She was deluded. They had intended to sell her, and they would. If she refused to comply, force would be used. She would be dragged out, hysterical and screaming. Originally it was supposed to happen once Aviola and Mucia were safely travelling. Polycarpus would have organised her removal from the apartment, then a vicious slave-master at the market would have taught her the realities with a knotted whip.

  ‘How old are you, Myla?’

  I could tell by her face that she was uncertain, but she said crisply, ‘Almost thirty.’

  This was my own age; I had a year to go. The slaves who would soon be entitled to be given or to buy their freedom were at the same stage of life as me. I liked the ones who were determined to achieve something better, using their talents. Not this one.

  All this woman had to show for her life was a string of children she could never see again and a man who, she really must know, had cared nothing for her. Myla might have been groomed to do his bidding when she was barely into puberty; she could have carried ten pregnancies by now, only to be dumped with a child at the breast.

  I could not let that influence me. ‘Yours is a tragic story, but I cannot exonerate you simply because you are unhappy. I need to know if you attacked your master, Myla. You had the most reason to lash out and kill Aviola – and his wife too.’ Particularly the wife, if Mucia instigated the plan to sell Myla.

  ‘Not me!’ Myla answered in a drab yet defiant voice.

  ‘Listen! You need to understand that you are under suspicion of murder.’ I was warning her formally.

  ‘I don’t care what you say.’

  I saw exactly why the family all thought the best way to deal with her was to shed her. A slave needs to be obliging. Having to ingratiate herself even though she thought she had rights was the curse of Myla’s slavery, yet the only way she would survive was to accept the position. Stupidly, she kept railing. ‘I was at full term. I couldn’t move. Anyway, he was my only hope of a future, anyone who thinks I hurt him is mad. It was the last thing I wanted. I wanted him left alone. I was lost once he was dead. Whatever you think, I needed him alive.’

  Her argument had some logic.

  44

  I had had a long hard day: tailing Roscius, re-interviewing the slaves, Polycarpus’ funeral and its aftermath. It was best not to press Myla any further. I needed sleep. She too look
ed drawn. It might even do her good to spend time reflecting on her position.

  I warned her we were not finished. Looking back now, all I meant was that we would resume first thing in the morning. My manner was not threatening, not by my standards. No murder suspect can expect smiles and sesame cakes.

  Myla humphed and took herself off.

  I fell into bed and must have dropped off immediately. I slept long and deep. When I woke next morning, everywhere was quiet, though my body clock said it was not especially late.

  Dromo was missing. I went out alone to fetch fresh bread and food for breakfast. I felt stiff, the kind of sluggishness I hate, especially when I am facing important work. This was a morning when I would have liked to go to the Stargazer, not just for food, but to consult with Manlius Faustus if he happened by. Mind you, the last time I did that I ended up with this bothersome commission …

  I had taken a clean tunic and managed to persuade a local bath house manager to let me in. The water was nearly cold, of course, last night’s leavings, and they would not fire up the furnace again until this afternoon.

  What I needed was a lengthy hot soak and steam; that would have given me time to decide, before I spoke to Myla, whether I really thought she was implicated in any of the murders. She had a strong motive for attacking Aviola and Mucia, though she was lumbering in the last stages of pregnancy at the time. As for Polycarpus, I supposed she may have argued with him about the plan to sell her but I knew of no other grievance. Stewards get blamed for everything, even when they are only carrying out their masters’ orders. Polycarpus had been Aviola’s point of interaction with staff when there was any difficult issue. It was feasible that Myla made him into a hate figure. If so, I had seen no sign of it.