XXI

The red hair was the crinkled gingery type. It was red enough to call for comment, though not too vivid. It would not distract nervous cattle, for instance—and it did not frighten me. With it came pale skin, invisible eyelashes, and sluice-water eyes. The hair was drawn back in a way that emphasised her brow; it should have given her face a childlike quality, but instead her expression suggested that Severina Zotica had passed through childhood too quickly for her own good. She looked the same age as Helena, though I knew she must be younger by several years. She had a witch’s old eyes.

“You’ll get the pip,” she said sourly, “sitting out in the shade all day.”

I tested my limbs for broken bones. “Next time, try sending me a simple invitation to come indoors.”

“Would you accept?”

“Always glad to meet a girl who has made a success of herself.”

The professional bride wore a sleeved overtunic in a shade of silver green which combined both simplicity and good taste. An eye for colour: the work on her loom was in happy shades of amber, oatmeal and rust. Her room had matt saffron walls, against which glowed the chair cushions and door curtains worked in brighter tones, while a great floor rug stretched in front of me, thickly tufted with flame, dark brown and black. I ached in so many places I gazed at it, thinking the floor would be a nice place to lie down.

I felt the back of my head, finding blood in my hair. Inside my tunic something trickled depressingly from my last mission’s unhealed wound. “Your musclemen have knocked me about. If this chat is going to be drawn out, could one of them bring me a seat?”

“Fetch it yourself.” She motioned her slaves to absent themselves. I folded my arms, braced my legs, and stayed on my feet. “Tough, eh?” she mocked.

She started working at the loom. She was sitting sideways, pretending to give me little of her attention, but it was all there. The repetitive movements of the shuttle frayed my tender nerves. “Lady, would you mind not doing that while you’re talking to me?”

“You can do the talking.” Her mouth compressed angrily, though she kept her voice level. “You have plenty to explain. You have been watching my house all week and following me around blatantly. One of my tenants tells me you were in the Subura asking crass questions about my private life—”

“You must be used to that,” I interrupted. “Anyway, I don’t follow you everywhere; I gave the pantomime a miss: seen it. The orchestra was flat, the plot was an insult, and the mime himself was a balding old paunch with goggle eyes, too arthritic to make a decent stab at it.”

“I enjoyed it.”

“An awkward type, eh?”

“I make my own judgements—do you have a name?”

“Didius Falco.”

“An informer?”

“Correct.”

“Yet you despise me!” I was not one of those pathetic worms who eavesdrop on senators in order to sell their sordid indiscretions to Anacrites at the Palace or to their own dissatisfied wives, but I let the insult pass. “So, Falco, who is hiring you to spy on me?”

“Your fiancé’s family. Don’t blame them.”

“I don’t!” Severina retorted crisply. “They and I will reach an understanding in due course. They have his interests at heart. So do I, as it happens.”

“In love?” I demanded caustically.

“What do you think?”

“Not a chance. Is he?”

“I doubt it.”

“That’s honest.”

“Novus and I are practical people. Romantic love can be very short-lived.”

I wondered if Hortensius Novus was more smitten than she was. A man who has survived so many years as a bachelor usually likes to persuade himself his reason for abandoning his freedom is a special one. The girl spoke to me with a cool competence she probably restrained in his company. Poor old Novus might be deluding himself that his beloved was demure.

Reaching into a basket for a new hank of wool, Severina lifted her head; she was watching me. I meanwhile was still trying to decide why she had taken the initiative today. It could be simple impatience at me following her about. Yet I sensed that she really loved playing with fire.

She sat up, and rested her pointed chin on tapering white fingers. “You had better bring the family’s anxieties into the open,” she offered. “I have nothing to hide.”

“My clients’ anxieties are those anyone would have, young lady—your sordid past, your present motives, and your future plans.”

“I am sure you know,” Severina interpolated, still composed but with a glint I welcomed, “my past has been investigated thoroughly.”

“By an old praetorian bombast who had not enough sense to pay attention to his extremely able clerk.” The look she gave me might be renewed respect—or increasing dislike. “I reckon the clerk took a shine to you—and not necessarily in secret,” I added, remembering Lusius as a straightforward type who might speak out. “What did you think?”

Severina looked amused by the question but managed to make her answer sound genteel. “I have no idea.”

“Lies, Zotica! Well, I’m the new boy here; strictly neutral so far. Suppose you whisper into my kindly ear what really happened. Let’s start with your first manoeuvre. You had been dragged from the Delos slave market in your childhood, and ended up in Rome. You married your master; how did you wangle that?”

“Without trickery, I assure you. Moscus bought me because I looked quick; he wanted someone to train as a stock-keeper—”

“An aptitude for figures must stand you in good stead as a legatee.”

I saw her take a breath, but I failed to raise the flash fire I was hoping for. As redheads go she was pinched and secretive—the kind who broods on the ruin of empires. I could imagine her plotting revenge for imagined insults years after the event. “Serverus Moscus never touched me, but when I was sixteen he asked me to marry him. Perhaps because he had never abused me—unlike others—I agreed. Why not? His shop was the best place I had ever lived in, and I felt at home. I gained my freedom. But most marriages are based on bargains; no one can sneer at me for taking my chance.” She had an interesting way of anticipating both sides of a conversation. In private she probably talked out loud to herself.

“What did he get?”

“Youth. Company.”

“Innocence?” I chided.

That did make her burn more fiercely. “A faithful woman and a quiet house where he could bring his friends! How many men can boast so much? Do you have that—or a cheap scut who shrieks at you?” I made no reply. Severina went on in a low, angry voice, “He was an elderly man. His strength was fading. I was a good wife while I could be, but we both knew it would probably not last long.”

“Looked after him, did you?”

Her straight look rejected my sly tone. “None of my husbands, Didius Falco, had cause for regret.”

“Truly professional!” She took the sneer on the chin. I stared at her. With that pallid skin, an almost brittle frame, and her self-contained manner it was impossible to imagine what she must be like in bed. But men in search of security might easily convince themselves she was biddable. “Did you send Moscus to the amphitheatre that day?”

“I knew he had gone.”

“Did you realise how hot it was? Had you ever suspected that he had a weak heart? Try to stop him?”

“I am not a nag.”

“So Moscus boiled over; you just wiped the froth off the cooking bench and moved up a clean pot! Where did you find Eprius, the apothecary?”

“He found me.” She was forcing too much patience into her tone; an innocent party would have sworn at me by now. “After Moscus collapsed at the theatre someone ran to his shop for a draught that might revive the invalid—no use. Moscus had already gone to the gods. Life can be brutal; while I was mourning my husband, Eprius called to request payment for the cordial.”

“You soon won round your creditor.” Severina had the grace to let her small mouth slide into a smile, and I was aware that she noticed my answering twitch. “Then what—he choked, didn’t he?” She nodded. Those busy hands worked at their loom while I lost any temptation to sympathise: I was imagining those same little hands struggling to hold down the apothecary during his fatal convulsion. “Were you in the house?”

“Another room.” I watched her mentally adjust to the new line of interrogation. She had practised this story far too many times for me to unnerve her. “He was unconscious when they called me. I did what I could to make him breathe again; most people would have panicked. The lozenge was wedged a long way back. A doctor discovered it afterwards but at the time, distraught and fairly frightened, I admit I failed. I blamed myself—but you can only call what happened an accident.”

“Had a cough, did he?” I demanded with a sneer.

“Yes.”

“Had it long?”

“We lived on the Esquiline.” Well known as an unhealthy area; she made her murder methods fit convincingly.

“Who gave him the menthol jujube?”

“I presume he had prescribed it for himself. He always kept a little soapstone box of them. I never saw him take them, but he told me they were for his cough.”

“Was it your habit to involve yourself in his business? A bright and helpful partner like you—I bet the first thing you did when he brought you home in your bridal wreath was to offer to catalogue his recipes and cross-reference his poison lists … What happened to Grittius Fronto?”

This time she shuddered. “You must know that. An animal ate him. And before you ask, I had nothing to do with his business. I never went to the arena where it happened, nor was I there—or anywhere nearby—when Fronto died!”

I shook my head. “I hear the scene was very bloody.”

Severina said nothing. Her face was so white normally it was impossible to decide whether she was truly upset now. But I knew what I thought.

She had too many well-prepared answers. I tried tossing in a silly question: “Did you know the panther, by the way?”

Our eyes met. It felt an interesting clash.

*   *   *

I must have shaken her confidence. Severina was looking at me much more speculatively. “You must be very brave,” I said, “to contemplate making your flame-coloured veil stretch to yet another wedding.”

“It’s good cloth; I wove it myself.” The redhead had rallied. Self-mockery stirred quite attractively behind those cold blue eyes. “Single women without guardians,” she commented more sombrely, “have a limited social life.”

“True—and it’s miserable being a homemaker, with nobody left to welcome home…”

By this time, if I had not heard so many sordid details of what happened to her husbands I might well have let her win me over. I had expected some sort of dinner-party vamp. I hated the thought that Severina’s quiet domestic habits were a front for calculated violence. Girls who weave and go to the library are supposed to be safe. “You must be delighted to discover an astrologer who prophesies your next husband will outlive you.”

“Tyche told you that?”

“You knew she would. Did you warn her I would follow you in? She seemed extremely well prepared.”

“We professional women stick together,” replied Severina in a dry tone that reminded me of Tyche herself. “Have you finished, Falco? I have things I want to do today.” I felt disappointed as she chopped off the discussion. Then I saw her stop herself. A mistake, trying to be rid of me; my grilling must have been making an impression. Rather feebly, she added: “Unless you have anything more to ask?”

I smiled slightly, letting her know she was looking vulnerable. “Nothing else.”

My bruises had stiffened up. The pain had become more nagging; it would take days to shift. “Thanks for your time. If there is anything else I need to know, I’ll come here and ask you directly.”

“How thoughtful.” Her eyes were back on the coloured hanks of wool she kept in a tall basket at her feet.

“Admit it,” I wheedled. “A maid does the hard work for you after the visitors have gone.”

Severina looked up. “Wrong, Falco.” She let a trace of sadness filter across her normally guarded face. A touching effect. “Wrong about everything, actually.”

“Ah well; I loved your tale. I enjoy a well-turned comedy.”

Unperturbed, the gold-digger instructed me, “Get out of my house.”

She was tough, and up to a point honest; I liked that. “I’m going. One last question: the Hortensius mob seem a tight little clique. Don’t you feel out of place?”

“I am prepared to make the effort.”

“Clever girl.”

“It is the least I can do for Novus!”

She was clever; but when I left, her eyes followed me more keenly than they should have done.

*   *   *

I limped into the first open bathhouse, pushed straight through the steam rooms, and eased my aches and grazes into a hot basin to soak. The sword-cut I had been nursing while I was imprisoned in the Lautumiae had cracked open partially when the gold-digger’s house-slaves were slinging me about. I lay in the hot basin, letting myself sink into the next best mood to oblivion while I pulled at the loose scar the way you never should but always do.

Eventually I realised I had forgotten about trying to buy Severina. Never mind. I could still make an offer. Have to go back to negotiate a price—another day. Another day, when I was mentally prepared for the encounter and my limbs could move freely again.

She was certainly a challenge. And the idea that I might pose a challenge for her didn’t bother me at all.