The Chariots of Calyx by Rosemary Rowe Page A

draught last night, by all accounts,’ Junio said. ‘He had drunk enough to fell a giant. He was rather given to that, it seems – harsh when he was sober and bestial when he was drunk – though he could be surprisingly generous to his favourites at times. His mother is just as difficult in her own way, they tell me – demanding and hard to please. She is the same with everyone, even with Monnius, refusing to take his advice over her estates and declining to use his drying houses. One of the maidservants called her a human elephant, making a loud noise and trampling everything in her path.’
    I have never seen an elephant, but I grinned at the description. From the tales I have heard, they are larger than life, with big noses, and have been known to stampede out of control in the amphitheatre and terrify the bystanders. The comparison with Annia Augusta seemed peculiarly apt. (Although one can never believe everything one hears. Some of the legends say that elephants wear their teeth outside, upside down on either side of their mouths.)
    ‘And the lady Lydia?’ I asked.
    ‘Apart from her herbal skills, they think of her as a joke. She says, thinks and does whatever Annia Augusta tells her to, except where her child is concerned – she can be determined then, by all accounts. Apparently she was always the same. Completely indecisive. Some of the slaves can remember when Monnius married her – they did not live in this house then, of course. He built his career and fortune on her marriage portion. She could not find a husband, and her father gave her a rich dowry.’
    ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Monnius would have had the usufruct of that.’
    ‘Exactly – but he had to give her back her estates when he divorced her. The servants say he tried to claim that there was a question over
her
fidelity, so he could keep the estates, but Lydia was so plain she was always above suspicion.’ He grinned. ‘The whisper is that when her father died, Monnius hoped to get control of her lands again, and that is why he let Annia Augusta bring her here, but Lydia’s brother had been managing the money in the meantime, and most of it was lost in legal wrangles over the will.’
    I nodded. ‘Then . . .’ I began, but I got no further.
    From Monnius’ bedchamber came the eerie sound of someone calling the dead man’s name three times. Then a low tuneless wailing began, followed a moment later by the moaning of funereal pipes, and the dreadful keening of professional weepers. I looked at Junio. The lamentations had begun.
    We scrambled to our feet like a pair of guilty schoolboys. It would hardly be acceptable to be found here, gossiping like a pair of equals. We went out into the lobby.
    The moaning was louder there, and I glanced at Junio in surprise. The voice that was doing the wailing did not sound like Fulvia’s.

Chapter Nine
    We had come out into the lobby not a moment too soon. An instant later there was a disturbance in the death chamber. A door slammed, there was the sound of raised voices – during which the wailing faltered – and finally one long last ululation before the tuneless moaning stopped abruptly, and a woman’s voice took up the lamentation.
    Junio and I stood back as the door to Monnius’ chamber opened and the bier was carried out, borne high by some of the funeral attendants, and accompanied by others: some carrying the sacrificial herbs, some banging gongs and playing pipes, some simply wailing and beating their breasts. Behind them walked Fulvia, her brow now covered in ashes, her eyes lowered and her hands clasped, lamenting in a sweet, low, melancholy voice.
    She did not glance towards us as she passed, and the noisy little procession moved away into the house. Monnius’ bier would be laid down in the public space at the back of the atrium, where no doubt other civic officials and dignitaries would soon be calling to pay their respects, to leave their funeral gifts or even – if they had