The Bow of Heaven - Book I: The Other Al - By Andrew Levkoff Page 0,71

Tessa’s breath. Eirene returned. I raised Tessa’s damp head and the tearful scullery girl brought the water to Tessa’s lips. The little she managed to get down made her choke.

“You’ll kill her,” Sabina repeated.

“Eirene, step away. Let no more be done. Alexander, I have no reason to doubt you, but if you have maliciously kept Sabina from administering to Tessa, so help me .... Both of you, go with Malchus. He will keep you safe and separate till morning. The rest of you, except you, Betto, go to your quarters and pray to our lares domestici to preserve this woman. Betto, fetch another guard, stay by Tessa, do nothing but watch over her. We will let the gods decide if she lives or if she dies.”

Just before dawn, the gods chose death. Tessa’s shallow breath rose to a gasp, then stopped. Crassus sent a rider to Ostia to notify her parents and to pay their owners more than the man and woman’s worth for allowing them to come to Rome for a few short days to collect the body. While we waited, Crassus held court.

***

The day was grey but looked unlikely to rain upon us. “The accuser shall speak first,” announced Crassus from his seat in the tablinum. He had turned it to face the peristyle where the household had gathered, standing, at my request, on the gravel paths, avoiding the few decorative patches of lawn. Livia sat by Sabina. I would have given anything to have had a private moment with her, but there was no opportunity; the first words she would hear from me would be those that condemned her mother.

“Dominus, if I am upheld in these proceedings, we must replace all the soil in our flower beds. To prove to you why we must take this extraordinary measure, I have asked Malchus to bring these three strays, bitches in fact, from the streets.” The familia murmured, and I was fairly certain I heard Nestor, scrawny and hateful, ‘there’s only one dog I see up there ought to be put down.’

“Keep them at a distance,” Crassus said to the guards holding them by short, rope leashes. “I’ll not have fleas infesting the domus.” I emptied the contents of my belt pouch onto a table just below where Crassus sat. With a tweezers, I raised the drooping purple bloom for all to see. “In Greece, we call this lykotonon, ‘wolf killer.’ Hunters rub their arrows on its petals, its leaves, its stem, but mostly on a ground up paste made from its root.”

“How is it,” Crassus asked, “that a young Athenian philosopher comes by such knowledge?”

“Dominus, Aristotle was succeeded by Theophrastus, acknowledged even by Romans as the father of botany. I have read De Causis Plantarums, and have seen with my own eyes the carefully guarded corner of the Lyceum gardens devoted to aconitum napellus. It is beautiful, but deadly.”

I instructed the guards to force the dogs to sit on disparate patches of ground throughout the peristyle. Nothing happened. “I expected this,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Now the flower beds.” The dogs were moved. “Make sure they sit; do not let them lie down.”

“What difference can that make?” Crassus asked.

“I want to be certain their genitals come in contact with the soil. You see, lykotonon need not be ingested to be poisonous. It can be absorbed through the skin.” The dogs looked wide-eyed and terrified, but otherwise unremarkable.

“Enough, Alexander. Get to the point. We understand that you are claiming Tessa was poisoned from contact with this flower, evidence of which is dramatically and overwhelmingly non-existent. But even if you are correct, what proof do you have that Sabina had anything to do with it? Tessa was not the only one with symptoms.”

“My toes were numb,” Betto called out.

“Mine too,” cried another.

“Because you stopped to smell Tessa’s handiwork,” I said. “As you leaned in, your toes touched the soil on which Sabina had sprinkled the pulverized root of aconitum. The effect would not be lasting. But Tessa trod those beds barefoot day after day. Dominus, may I speak with Sabina?”

“You may.”

“Sabina, are you in love with Ludovicus?”

“No. Definitely not.”

Why should she help? “Let me rephrase. Is Ludovicus your lover?”

“Again, no.”

“Was he your lover?” Silence. “Shall I ask him? He’s standing just to your left.”

“We have shared a bed, yes.”

I turned again to Crassus. “I came upon Sabina during one of my walks in the woods at the western end of the estate.” At least I could leave Livia