“What did she eat last night?” I asked.
“Nothing, she had no appetite.”
“She ate nothing at all?”
“The last thing she ate was a pie that Avitoria bought her from the pastry shop, a few days ago,” said Vitia. “But when people are ill from food, that is different, isn’t it?”
“Very different,” I said.
“She had a little ale,” one of the British girls, Regina, said. “Avitoria saw to it, because we were working.”
I looked at the tankard that was on the table. I picked it up and held it in the daylight. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but I thought I could see a little white powder on the rim – and caught the scent of roses.
I turned and ran out of the house, my heart thumping, feeling sick. I went over to the rubbish heap. I searched the snow-covered pile for the dead cat I had seen weeks ago. It was nothing but a few scraps of fur and bone now. Under the bone, something winked and glinted in the dawn light.
I bent to pick it up. It was a cosmetic pot made of gold, inlaid with red glass in the shape of a snake. I recognised it at once. Only one woman in this town had anything so beautiful: Julia Domna, the Empress. The cosmetic pot was the one in which she kept the white lead which she used for lightening her skin.
It can poison, even as far as death. I remembered my father’s words clearly, his towering rage back in Rome, my mother’s exasperation. But even the Empress uses it!
She did. And the last time I had seen this pot was in Avitoria’s hand. Now here it lay, outside her house – and inside, her mistress Theodora lay poisoned and on the brink of death.
*
“Avitoria poisoned Theodora?” you say, shocked.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“But why? She was a kind mistress. She was going to free her in her will!”
“She was – until Julia Domna arrived. The Empress wanted to buy Avitoria from Theodora. I believe Avitoria decided she could not bear being sold away from her home, and lose any chance of reaching her family again. She decided to do something about it. If Theodora died before she could sell her, Avitoria would be free.”
“So, she was a murderess!” you say, full of pious rage. “Of course, you told the Emperor?”
I take a deep breath, and go on.
21.
Emperor’s End
Standing there on the rubbish heap in Eboracum, a thousand thoughts swirled around my head. I knew in my heart that Avitoria had poisoned Theodora. I also knew the punishment for slaves who killed their owner: every slave in the household would be put to death. The girls who were hoping for their freedom tonight would be executed instead, though they had committed no crime.
For the Roman philosophers, there was no question of the right action. I should tell at once. But I was not a Roman philosopher. I was only a girl from the provinces.
I could not do it. I could not tell what I knew.
Yet I knew it was my duty to.
I still had not decided when I stepped down from the rubbish heap, the cosmetic pot clutched in my hand. In the light of dawn, I found myself facing Avitoria. Her eyes went to the glinting pot in my hand. I saw her expression shift. Did she guess what I knew? Should I confront her? I was still so stunned by what I had discovered that I doubted myself. Perhaps I was wrong.
So it was Avitoria who spoke first – and changed everything.
“You have to go,” she blurted out. I saw now that she had tears streaking her face.
“Go, where?” I said blankly.
“Anywhere, away from here!”
“I don’t understand,” I began. “Where is Arcturus?”
“Oh, I didn’t wait for him. I just ran! The Emperor is dead, and Caracalla is killing everyone who was his friend,” she said.
“What? Where is my father?” I gasped.
She hesitated.
“Your father had to escape. He says he will meet you outside the walls of Eboracum. He spoke of a healing spring, east of here. The waters there are sacred to Sulis. He says he will meet you there.”
Then Avitoria was pulling me away from the house. It did not cross my mind to disbelieve her – there was truth in her voice and I knew in my heart it was exactly what Caracalla would do. He hungered like a wolf for power, and once he had it, he would destroy everything that might challenge that power. Geta would be lucky to survive the night, I knew – it would depend on if his mother could protect him. The palace was gone, lost to me. It had vanished like a dream. This was what my dream had foretold: not my death, but the death of Leptis Magna’s most powerful son, the Emperor Septimius Severus.
Avitoria pushed me out into the street, and we went stumbling together, hand in hand, along it. The snow had all turned to dirty water now, and ran along the gutters, down towards the drains. The sun was rising. Soon there would be nowhere for me to hide. My only hope now was to meet my father. We would be penniless, beggars in a foreign land, but at least we would be alive. I stopped as I saw the gates and the guards in front of them.
“How do I get out of the city?” I said, in panic.
“You can cross the river,” Avitoria said.
I realised she was right. In many places there were no walls, there was just the river. There had been laws against building fortified cities, in case they were occupied by enemies who held them against the Empire. Now the enemy was the Empire, I realised. Gaps between emperors loomed like chasms for the ordinary people like us. They were dangerous times.
I could hear cries and clashing swords in the distance. There was confusion, and
