The Curse-Maker (35 page)

I shoved her head back against the wall. Vitellius yelped. No goddamn time, and not much hope.

I jammed my fingers down her throat and counted to five. Tried again. This time the reflex kicked in. She started retching, couldn't feel it. I forced her head down between her knees. C'mon, Sulpicia. Your stomach muscles are tight enough.

It came up a gush, and Vitellius jumped back. Measure of his devotion. I repeated the process until her stomach was empty and my hands and tunic were stained with rust-colored vomit.

The boyfriend was squealing. I checked her pulse. Slowing. Normal color coming back. She probably wouldn't die today.

His squeal got louder. “She drank poison. Give her simple broth and wine with a lot of water.” A fly buzzed dangerously close to his open mouth. “Go. Get her out of here.”

She was starting to moan a little. At least she'd had practice. He made her lean on him, and they half fell, half dragged their way to the square. The gaggle of onlookers waddled out of their way.

Octavio's face corroded around the edges like a rusty pipe. “You know, Arcturus—you may have just killed Materna. Philo needed you right away. Sulpicia was probably just drunk or someth—”

“Either you're a fraud or an idiot. If Materna's unconscious, she's gone. You said so yourself. I can't raise the dead. That was Faro's job, remember?”

I took a step toward him. His fingers curled into tight little red balls at his sides.

“Sulpicia was poisoned—probably by the same stuff that's killing Materna—and I don't make decisions about who lives and dies around here. Do you?”

We glared at each other, his chest puffing with exertion, the sweat still dripping on the pavement. Materna was dying. They were already lining up the evidence.

The baths were loud in desertion, like an empty theater. I washed my hands in the overflow pipe while Octavio breathed on my elbow. He belonged here, like mildew, and was just as hard to get rid of.

He motioned with his head toward the
apodyterium.
Materna was on the floor, her body oozing over the stone as if it were already dead. Maybe it always was.

Philo was bent over her mouth, listening to her breathe. “Arcturus—thank God you're here. I don't have much experience with this sort of thing. I think she's been poisoned. It's not
aconitum.
”

His handsome face was flushed and worried. I looked down at the woman who wanted to kill my wife and me.

“How long has she been unconscious?”

“About half an hour, I think. They sent for me as soon as she collapsed.”

“Did you make her vomit?”

“I tried. She couldn't do it. She's in very deep.”

I stared at Materna's pulpy body, her massive chest climbing like a weary traveler, then descending slowly, waiting for the trip to end. Her body was heavy and fat, but not with food or wine. She fed off a diet of power, spiced with the occasional life.

A small breeze from the exercise yard nudged me in the back, and I knelt down next to Philo. Pulled open her eyes. The pupils swallowed everything. Humanity had been devoured a long time ago. The darkness was still hungry, and it was waiting for Materna.

Her lips were dry, pressed in a skeleton's smile against yellow teeth. Skin the color of parchment, and as hot as a blister full of pus.

I looked up at Philo. “She's not going to make it.”

A sob swelled from the corner. Secunda was slumped on the stone bench, blending in with the rock. Philo stood up, his knees creaking. He wavered there, not sure if he should try to comfort Secunda or wait for a more specific diagnosis.

Octavio crawled back into the room, wanting to make sure we knew he was still in charge. He flicked a glance at Philo and let the weight of his authority drop on me.

“What is it?”

I waited to hear what Philo would say. He looked at me with a dog's eyes, and when I stared blandly back, my eyebrows raised, he made it sound like a suggestion.

“I think—
strychnos
?”

He whispered it, but it was loud enough to solicit another sob from the corner. I ignored Secunda. She could trot out the devoted daughter act on someone else's time. I didn't bother to keep my voice down.

“More than a maybe. And yes, Octavio, to your next question. It was murder. Sometimes people eat a few berries so they can have visions, but Materna would never do that. She'd be too afraid of what she might see.”

The gasp in the corner was hard to ignore. Secunda stood up, her hand to her throat. “She saw Faro—before—before…”

“Before she fell asleep.” Trust Philo to make it sound like a goddamn bedtime story.

Secunda nodded, her eyes swelling with tears. I walked over to her.

“What did she see?”

She stared ahead of us and through the archway, where the shadows from the
palaestra
drew shapes on the floor. “She saw him—talked to him—”

“What did she say?”

“Arcturus, do you think you should…” Philo, always so protective of women.

“What did she say?”

“She said—she said—‘Faro—I'm sorry. Forgive me, my love.' ”

Secunda had read one too many cheap Greek novels.

“What did your mother really say, Secunda?”

She broke off her trance, looked at me for the first time. Recognition, and a little of the old family spite. “You. How do you know? You probably killed her. I heard—I heard you tell her how you would, that morning when you—when you hit poor Faro.”

She crowed it like a wedding announcement. Octavio's footsteps made a happy sound when they trotted up to me.

“Arcturus—” He was using his formal voice.

“Not just yet, Octavio. Why isn't Papirius here? He likes to be present whenever I'm accused of something.”

He drew his robes together, pretending they weren't too damp and dirty and cheap to make an impression. “He's coming. He knows you're here.”

“What a relief. I wouldn't want him to miss the show.”

I turned back to Secunda, her eyes little slits of suspicion and malice. “Let's have the truth. From the beginning.”

“I've told you—and you—you're a—”

“I'm lots of things. Murderer isn't one of them. Besides, neither you nor anyone else will shed any tears for Materna. If you're not careful, Secunda—very careful—you'll wind up just like her.”

Her pink lips drew back in a snarl. Any prettiness she owned because of youth was rapidly aging. She turned to Octavio. “You let him stand there and threaten me? You heard him—he threatened to kill me, just like—”

Before I could tell her to shut her goddamn mouth, Philo put his hands on her shoulders. Maybe I wasn't the best person to get it out of her. He made soothing noises. She looked at him like most women did.

An officious throat clearing announced Papirius, followed by one of his ubiquitous slaves. He avoided looking at me. Octavio bent low, spine surprisingly mobile. But then maybe he didn't have one.

“Papirius. They say it's murder. Poison again.
Strychnos.
”

“Before you hear it secondhand, Materna's daughter already accused me. Sorry you missed the first act.”

His cheeks stood out like jutting rocks. He pursed his lips together, pretended I wasn't there. He said to Octavio: “What are we waiting for?”

I answered him. “For Secunda to tell us what happened this morning. Materna wasn't the only one poisoned.”

Philo's eyes took in the vomit on the hem of my tunic. Octavio asked before he could. “You mean Sulpicia—”

“Was poisoned, too. With the same thing—and we don't want the fine people of Aquae Sulis to think there's
strychnos
in the water, now, do we?”

Papirius's slave whisked a fly away from his master, who made a dismissive gesture at him.

“Do we, Papirius?” I said softly.

He looked over to where Secunda and Philo were standing. “Make her talk.”

She clutched Philo's arm. “Don't let them—”

“For all we know, she did it.” The priest's voice was a trifle bored. “Make her talk, and get the body out of here.”

“She's still alive.”

“Well, for God's sake, Philo, take her to your house, then, but get her out of here. We need to reopen.”

Octavio pulled at Papirius's sleeve. “What about Secundus? We should send someone to Londinium—”

“He's not in Londinium.” Secunda's nose was red from blowing it on a tunic fold. She looked up at Philo and gave him the big eyes. “He's on one of our farms. The northern one.”

Papirius shook his arm away from Octavio's fingers. “Handle it, then.” The
balneator
bowed, more stiffly this time, and scurried away.

Philo looked down into Secunda's face. “Can you talk now?”

She leaned against him, but he drew away. She glanced at Papirius. No soft place to hide. She knew better than to look at me for it.

“All—all right. Is Mama—is Mama really going to—”

“In about an hour, more or less. So save the shock and surprise for when you'll need it.”

I was tired of Philo treating her like a little girl who was losing her beloved mother. She wasn't little, she wasn't lost, and only the Furies knew what Materna was.

She blew her nose again while Papirius tapped his foot and his slave looked for more flies. Octavio ran back into the room, looking around as if he'd forgotten something.

Philo nudged her. “Go on.”

“When we got here this morning—she always uses the same storage shelf, you know, our slave reserves it for her—well, there was—there was a cask of wine in it, and a note.”

“Did she buy the wine herself?”

“I—I don't know.”

“What about the note? Was she holding something, Philo?”

He turned to me. “I didn't see—”

Secunda interrupted him. If she was going to talk, she wanted all the lines.

“She tore it up after she read it. Laughed, chucked me under the chin, like she—like she…” Artistic sob on her sleeve. No one said anything, so she managed to regain her strength. “She tore it up—threw it in the spring. Said it was a dedication to Sulis.”

“What kind of wine was it?”

“How should I know? Something sweet. She said it was foreign—and that she wanted to—to celebrate, so she drank it.”

“How soon afterward did she not feel well?” Philo had a way of making poison sound about as harmful as a fart.

“I guess—I guess an hour or two. We could hear—hear her heart beating, and she said her chest hurt. Crassa told her to get you, Philo, but she got mad—really mad all of a sudden. Then she turned red, and her mouth got dry, and she was thirsty—and she started shaking.”

“Anger is a symptom.” Or maybe Materna was still thinking about the slap he gave her.

Secunda stared at me, some spittle on her lips. “If you know so much, why don't you tell it?”

“I'm not a trustworthy source.”

Papirius interrupted us. “Octavio—go get the servants that were watching the cubicles this morning.”

The bathmaster didn't like to be reminded that he wasn't. He faded back into the vapor.

The priest asked: “Is that all?” It wasn't a question.

“Not quite. After anger and the shakes, there's delirium. She saw Faro. What did she say, Secunda?”

I'm not sure why I wanted to know so much. The girl's eyes bounced off all of us, then settled on Philo, until they lowered at what used to be her mother stretched out on the floor.

“She said—she said—‘Faro. Nail it. Nail it, or it's over.' ”

A shudder twisted Papirius's straight back. “Anything else?”

She shook her head.

Philo said: “After that—she must've lost consciousness.”

She nodded again. None of us said anything for a long minute, while Materna's slow breath made the room a little colder. A broken-down chorus of three little boys and two old men followed behind Octavio and trooped in the room.

He lined them up in front of Papirius. One of the old men scratched himself. Bath servants were more cheap and plentiful than the cubicles themselves.

I held up a coin. “A
denarius
for anyone who saw who put wine in the fat woman's shelf this morning. No other questions asked.”

They licked their lips and stared at the money. I twisted it around, the shiny silver promising life to the old, experience to the young.

“You won't lose your place here, or be punished in any way. Right?”

I shot it at Papirius, and he flinched when it hit him, but he nodded.

An old man smacked his lips, this time getting out more than spit. “It were a woman.”

“What kind of woman? Young, old, ugly, pretty—”

“Don't know. Saw her from behind. Looked young from there.”

I rubbed my nose and took a deep breath. Without looking at him, I said: “Philo, ask Secunda to turn around.”

“What? What are you—I can't believe—I won't stand—”

Papirius said: “Just turn her.”

A combination of cajoling and physical force resulted in a good view of Secunda's best side. I looked at the old man. “Is that the one?”

He squinted and craned his neck, then looked at me. “Will I get the money—no matter what I say?”

“No matter what.”

He drew up some phlegm from his lungs, spat on the floor. “Don't think it were her.”

Secunda's shoulders slumped with relief. “You cheap quack—I still think you killed—”

“Not so nice to be the one accused, is it, Secunda?”

It drew a little blood and shut her up for once, and she went back to cringing against Philo, as helpless as a viper in a basket.

I knelt down by Materna and straightened her
stola,
her legs sticking out like stems on a toadstool.