Saturnalia(59)

“I cannot say, but I certainly would not put it past her. She was the one who dealt with the aediles, you know.” Her mouth twisted in sour distaste. “She was the one who passed along the fees to them. We were all assessed, and no small part of our monthly dues stuck to her fingers.”

“Shocking!” Julia muttered. In some ways she was remarkably naive.

“You have no idea whether the poison buyer was a man or a woman?” I asked her.

“I could not tell you who bought it nor when it was bought. But between the October Horse festival and the night she died, she was spending more freely than before. Her booth had new hangings and her clothes were all new. I heard she had bought a farm up near Fucinus.”

So far this wasn’t getting us anywhere. “Tell me this, Ascylta. Do you know of a poison that produces death in this way?” And I described the symptoms of Celer’s death as they had been described to me by Clodia. Following my recitation, Ascylta thought for a few minutes.

“There is a poison we call ‘the wife’s friend.’ It is a combination of herbs carefully blended, and it produces death as you describe, almost impossible to distinguish from a natural passing.”

“I would think it would be the most popular poison in the world,” I observed.

“It is not an easy one to make. It requires many ingredients and even I know only a few of them. Some of the ingredients are quite rare and costly. It is not easy to administer because it has a most unpleasant taste.”

“Does it work swiftly?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Very slowly. And it is cumulative. It must be given in small doses over a period of many months, in constantly increasing doses.”

“Why ‘the wife’s friend’?” I asked. “Why not ‘the heir’s friend’? I would think it was ideal for someone impatient to come into a legacy.”

She looked at me as if I were simple-minded. “Sons do most of the inheriting. How many men take food or drink daily from the hand of a son?”

“Would Harmodia have known how to mix this poison?” Julia asked.

“Oh, yes. It is a specialty of the Marsian striga …” she cut short, as if a sudden thought had struck her. “Now I think on it, twice last year a Greek-looking man came to my booth for some dried foxglove. It’s used in several medicines, but it’s also one of the ingredients of that poison. The reason I recall this man is that he came to my stall from Harmodia’s. Hers was beneath the next arch but one, and I usually sit outside mine so I saw where he came from.”

“And you think she might have been selling him that poison, but was out of foxglove those two times?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It could be. He just stuck in my mind because he didn’t look like our usual customers.”

“Why so you say that?” Julia asked her. “You’ve said he was Greek-looking. What was unusual about him?”

“Well, he was very tall and thin, and he wore very expensive clothes in the Greek fashion, three or four gold rings and expensive amulets. And in the front of his mouth, on the bottom, he had a couple of false teeth bound in with gold wire the way they only do in Egypt.”

We spoke a while longer, but the woman was able to remember nothing more of any use to us. We thanked her and gave her some money and got out of the cramped little tent.

“What do you think?” Julia asked. “Have we learned anything?”

“We now have a likely poison, if he was poisoned at all. As for the bad taste, Celer was in the habit of taking a cup of pulsum every morning. That stuff is so vile someone could mix bat dung in it and you’d never notice.”

“So suspicion still points at Clodia. What about the Greek-looking man?”

“Could be a coincidence. Harmodia may have sold that poison to a number of customers, and the foxglove was just one ingredient anyway. As Ascylta said, the ones buying poison usually come personally. Not many want to trust a job like that to a confederate. And if Harmodia was killed because she was extorting the buyer, well, that bothers me too.”

“Why?” We were wandering back toward the Forum with no particular aim in mind.

“Urgulus said the woman was nearly beheaded. It takes a strong man to do that with a knife. Somehow I feel that Clodia would have done something more discreet and tidy.”

“If she was covering her tracks, she’d deliberately want to direct attention away from herself, wouldn’t she? This city is full of thugs who would do such a thing for a handful of coins. If half the stories about her are true, she might have offered him payment in kind.”