The Lady Out of Time

8 - Confidence

The general's reputation for integrity was undisputed, but he hadn't argued the custom of bringing witnesses when investigating crime scenes. He had no interest in cutting corners when the fate of his friend lay in the balance. The two men standing just outside on the stone pathway, reputable Roman citizens whose word could be trusted, were his guarantors , and they turned to watch Agrippa as he came out of the building behind Julia.

When their eyes suddenly flickered down from his eyes to Julia's, he silently willed her to keep her peace even though they made it plain that they couldn't believe they had to suffer a slave's presence in their midst. A slave girl, no less. And no doubt she was already chafing under their haughty glares; he was all too aware the problems she had with authority. Or with the heavy handed Annia, at least.

But these men were no mere head slaves that she could trade blows with, whether physical or verbal. These were highly respected citizens, wealthy men, who would demand that an insolent slave be disciplined if one dared to even look at them overlong. Sparing her if she did something even more brazen to offend them would erode his reputation.

But she surprised him yet again: she didn't react to the men at all. Was it because she was aware how privileged she was to have accompanied him here, and was she acknowledging that their discontent was valid? That didn't seem like her. She took what she received with self-assured glee, not fawning gratitude and modesty.

He really had thought that she would at least try to get away with an impudent murmur under her breath or some other demonstration of fearless disregard for others' opinion of her. She had even tested Agrippa himself several times, toeing the line almost a little too far with either demands of her own or through disobedience against his. Strange that she would be so blithely complacent now.

"Look there," she said as she pointed at the steps leading up from the courtyard path. She continued to ignore the staring men fifteen paces away. "No one else has been here since the night of the murder, right? Not even the slaves or other attendants?"

He watched her carefully. She didn't seem to be straining against her nature and holding herself back from making insolent remarks. But she was sly and clever. He would have to keep a close eye on her.

"No one has passed through here except us since the morning Manius's body was discovered," he answered. "There are normally guards posted as well at the entrance of the villa, but we've asked them to step aside for the time being."

"So, these muddy tracks have been here since the night before last, and no one has disturbed them?"

At first, Agrippa didn't notice the outline of sandal prints against the gray and brown stones that cobbled the steps. But when he looked more carefully, he saw them now, unmistakably. How could he have missed this on the way in? He and Julia could have unknowingly swept away their only clue as to the murderer's identity when they went inside to check the shrine room.

"And look. There's only one set of tracks. You can even see it all the way clear past their feet." She pointed past the two men who narrowed their eyes at her forthcoming attitude, but Agrippa was too gripped by sudden excitement to give her a cautioning glance. And indeed, against the white pebbles of the walkway. He could see faint imprints of the same sandals.

"They're leading in toward the interior," Julia continued. "You see? If he was caught in the rain that evening, he would have had to have tracked mud just like this, at least until he probably scuffed them clean before stepping inside. Or if he made it home before the rain ever fell, then these tracks could belong to the killer who followed him home after. Because we know that Manius made it home safe at least - I can't think of another plausible reason for these tracks to be here when we know that they were left here the night of the murder. Unless the killer somehow wiped all their footprints clean or something...but he was long gone before the body was discovered early at dawn, right? He wouldn't have been able to see well enough in the dark to wipe away his tracks, even if he could do it so cleanly.

She was right about that too. All of it. Agrippa couldn't believe that the men who had come here to investigate the murder had missed such a thing, but maybe it was only obvious to him now that Julia had pointed it out.

"I'll tell you what I don't see, though," she added, as if she hadn't already accomplished more than he would have ever thought she would when he brought her here. "I don't see any tracks leading out. So even if these footprints do belong to the murderer, it means he never left that night. I'd say that maybe he left through another exit, but I didn't see any mud tracked past where the body was lying on the floor. The murderer would have left footprints the entire way."

Agrippa neither nodded nor shook his head, too entangled in his disbelief at her sharp observations and reasoning ability to do anything but stare at the girl. She stared back - until she raised one eyebrow and pointed down at the footprints again.

"So I suppose that means we just have to find out what size Manius's sandals were. And also Lucius's sandals. See whose shoes match these prints...?"

At the mention of his friend's name, his thoughts came rushing back into place to settle his mind. There was no time to waste wondering how an ordinary slave girl could possibly notice and deduce all these things when half a dozen grown, educated men had failed to do so. He would ponder that later when Lucius's name was cleared.

"One of you bring me Manius's shoes!" he barked at the two watchers standing nearby, and although both men were certainly of too-respected stature to be reduced to playing the part of errand boys, they jumped in place at his sharp command. The one on the left lifted his toga and scurried away to comply, while the other gaped open-mouthed from Agrippa to Julia and then back again. Was he amazed by the girl's deductive reasoning, or the fact that a fearsome general would heed the advice of a common slave girl?

Julia was smirking. Agrippa should have scolded her for that, but it was all he could do to wait anxiously with furrowed brow for the other man's return. When he did, he was carrying a pair of sandals that were decidedly smaller than the average man's - fitting of Manius's stature.

"That settles it, then." He stood back up and gave the sandals back. At his elbow, Julia made an inquisitive sound.

"Why? Don't we need Lucius's shoes too?"

"I know him well. We all do. He is a large man, taller than even me. His feet dwarfs Manius's."

"These aren't Lucius's tracks, then. So he's innocent, probably, unless he knows how to move about like a ghost without touching the ground."

Agrippa was in such good spirits that he let out a low chuckle. "No. These tracks must belong to Manius." He turned to the two watchers and gave them a sharp nod. "Note everything you saw and heard today. This is as good as confirmation that Lucius is innocent."

Julia, Julia, he mused. He saw her flip her hair just as they passed by the men on the way back to the carriage outside the villa, but he didn't admonish her for the subtle display of insolence. He was still struggling to understand where she had acquired such a keen eye for detail and an intuitive sense for criminal affairs. It was almost as if she had practiced such things before -

"Tell me how it is that you understand these things so well," he said suddenly on the ride back his villa. The clatter of the wooden wheels over the road almost drowned him out, but he knew she heard him when her gaze darted up to fix on his face.

"You're wondering how it's possible that a slave has the capacity for critical thinking," she answered dryly, and ordinarily, he would have at least raised an eyebrow at her tone. But there was a bitter look on her face that made him hold his tongue. "Well, I'll have you know that I wasn't always a slave. Not until a couple weeks ago, at least...Or is that a couple of months? Where do I count from?"

His eyes widened in shock. No one simply became a slave - not Roman citizens, at least. Conquered foreigners, yes, but it was clear that Julia was of pure Roman heritage. She had to have been born into s*****y as a child of a slave. A citizen could offer himself up as an indentured worker, but never would they lose their name or freedom.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Citizenship can't be stripped. Who sold you, then? They've committed a crime."

She sighed. "I wasn't sold. I was kidnapped, and then brought here."

Agrippa was a man who had plunged swords into men's bodies countless times, but what he heard now made his strong, rigid face lose a little color. "Kidnapped, from where? Who did this?"

But then she clamped her mouth shut and refused to answer no matter how insistently he tried to pry. And in the face of this new information, it didn't feel right to threaten her into submission for the truth, either - if she was a kidnapped Roman citizen, then by all law, her s*****y was not only illegal but sacrilege against the gods.

But why wouldn't she tell him? he wondered. Why was she keeping it a secret? He believed her. He could help. He couldn't imagine that the proud Julia would lie about something like this.

The rest of the ride home, she remained silent...harshly scolding herself for babbling the truth to the man. She didn't know why she'd begun to tell him that, why she had almost given away the true origins of the younger Julia whose body she inhabited now through space and time. The poor girl who had been ripped away from her home out there in the sea, her beloved island of Pandateria...

She couldn't tell Agrippa. He could never know. If he sent her back - which he would, she knew it, because he was a man of too much integrity to do otherwise - then she would have to face young Julia's mother. The mother who had no idea her daughter was dead and possessed by the mind of someone from two thousand years in the future...

She couldn't. She couldn't hope to maintain that facade. She couldn't pretend to be that woman's child and get away with it. Mothers just knew, didn't they? After the first few days, she would realize something was very wrong...

Julia felt sick to her stomach. She had faced down raging, violent husbands of her clients before, dangerous men with guns and a killing wrath. She wasn't afraid of violence or pain or snarled threats. She could stand tall in the face of all that without even flinching.

But she had no confidence when it came to masquerading as someone's dead child. She just couldn't. With a shudder, she avoided Agrippa's dark, contemplative gaze and stared out the window slit of the carriage.