A Roman Ransom

Chapter Twenty-four

‘Run away? The doctor? Why, whatever for?’ Aulus’s open-mouthed expression was almost comical — like the mask the actors put on in a theatre to represent the fool. ‘He hasn’t upset the master, surely to Jupiter?’

The steward shook his head, still breathless. ‘I don’t believe so. In fact Marcus is asking for his help — that’s why we’re looking for him now. I don’t know. It’s inexplicable. I can’t believe he’s done a thing like this. Why, only this morning. .’ He broke off and shook his head again.

Aulus gave his snaggled-toothed, ugly grin. ‘He’s just gone off on some errand or other, steward, you mark what I say. And whatever it is, he’ll charge the master high. He’s a clever sort of devil. Knows which urn his wine is coming from. He’s got himself a really cosy little set-up here: a regular little income and a lot of influence,’ he said approvingly. I was just thinking that one could rely on Aulus to see the mercenary angle when he added, with a note of malicious pleasure in his voice, ‘In fact, the physician’s turned into such a favourite with the master that he’s almost taken over from that cloak-thief over there.’ He seemed to mean the steward, I was surprised to see. I thought I was the cloak-thief if anybody was!

The steward looked unhappy. ‘I know the master was beginning to ask the medicus for advice, but I hardly think. .’

The gate-keeper interrupted him — when you are as big as Aulus is, you can sometimes afford to take a risk like that with your superiors. ‘Oh, come on, steward, you know quite well I’m right,’ he said with an unpleasant wink, baring his broken teeth at us again. ‘I heard you saying just the same thing last night to the cook. The doctor knows exactly how to get his just rewards — unlike some people round here I could name. I’ve watched him working his way into the master’s favour with his scrolls and his special diets. He’s set up for life here, if he plays it right. He wouldn’t throw all that away and just run off for good. As I say, he is up to something. He’ll be back again, see if he’s not.’

The steward looked a little brighter. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘I know the master offered him an enormous fee to leave his previous employer and come here instead.’

Aulus was still grinning like an ogre. ‘You see? He wouldn’t risk throwing a salary like that away unless his life depended on it. I wouldn’t, in his place.’

‘Not unless he was hoping to gain a greater sum,’ I put in soberly. The two slaves boggled at me in astonishment. I had not voiced my suspicions of the doctor up to now, but if I wanted somebody sent after Philades I would have to persuade the steward to do it soon, or it would be too late. I decided that the time had come to express what I had been thinking all along — after all, the medicus had gone off without a word, and there was just a chance that I might be believed.

Well, there was only one way to find out. I took it. ‘If he is due to have a share of that ransom money, for example,’ I explained.

Aulus muttered, ‘But surely. .’ just as the steward cried, ‘By all the gods. .’ They both stopped together and stared at me again.

The steward was the first to find his voice. ‘Citizen, you can’t be serious in this. The medicus is a very learned man. Not at all the sort of person you would expect. .’ He trailed off helplessly.

‘Clever?’ I suggested. ‘And resourceful too? I agree. And he is capable of taking unexpected risks and making quick decisions — we’ve seen that today.’

‘But kidnapping? And ransom? That’s quite another thing. And what has he to do with Lallius?’

‘It does seem rather out of character,’ I allowed. ‘But surely, that’s the cleverest part of it. He was the very last man you’d suspect — just as Mryna was the last person you’d suspect of taking risks with Marcellinus. That was probably exactly why he used her in his plans. And the doctor did know Lallius’s family. We were told that from the start. Perhaps he was promised a very large reward — as Aulus said, he was quite capable of demanding one.’

‘But suddenly demanding huge sums of ransom money from the master? Why would he do that? He could make a handsome living anywhere he chose. A man in his position. .’

‘And what was his position, exactly?’ I enquired. ‘A citizen — with no more independence than a slave, because he has no money of his own? Forced to be in somebody’s employ and at his master’s beck and call — and yet a person who is very conscious of his worth? Intelligent, quick-thinking and not afraid of risks? I think a man like that is more than capable of mounting such a plot.’

They were still gaping like barbarians for the first time at the games. Obviously they’d never thought of Philades in that way.

I was sympathetic. ‘You know, he had me completely fooled at first. He had persuaded me that he was slow and logical and completely unbending in his thoughts and attitudes. I suppose that only shows how clever and inventive he can really be. Don’t underestimate the sharpness of his mind.’

The chief slave looked doubtful. ‘He said the same of you — told me that you were the only man round here who had the wits to make a daring plan like this, and then think fast enough to take account of changing circumstances. He even wondered if you were really ill at all: there are herbs that will bring sickness and dreaming-fever on, he said, and he wouldn’t put it past you to have taken them, to give yourself a convincing alibi. You had the imagination to think of such a scheme, the cleverness to judge the doses right, and enough cool arrogance to see it through — forgive me, citizen. Those were his very words.’ He essayed a feeble smile. ‘I suppose it was a sort of compliment.’

If so, it was the most roundabout compliment I have ever heard — I’ve received more flattering insults in my time. I was still struggling to think of some response when Aulus chimed in with a practical remark.

‘Well, whatever he is, he’s well and truly down the lane by now. Though I suppose that if Malodius is on his way, you could send him out again to pick the doctor up — tell him the master needs him urgently and it’s vital that he brings him back at once. The cart would do that, if a runner can’t.’

The steward looked at him with something like respect. ‘Aulus, I do believe you’re right. And I’ve not forgotten that you helped us earlier. Remind me to put your duty schedule back to normal, with immediate effect.’ He turned to me. ‘I had thought of sending Pulcrus on a horse, but he’s in the atrium with the master, and I’d have to go in and explain all this before he’d be released — and if this citizen is right about the medicus it wouldn’t have been sensible, in any case.’

‘You could send Marcus’s carriage,’ I suggested. ‘That’s not being used.’

He shook his head. ‘It was used this morning and it’s being cleaned. I got a couple of the stable boys to make a start on it, since Malodius has been doing something else. Besides, I’d have to send an escort, I suppose, otherwise the doctor might try to clamber out along the way.’ He was finding excuses, that was obvious.

‘And the master would have to give permission for all that as well?’ The gate-keeper was outwardly respectful, but he gave me an exaggerated wink behind the chief slave’s back. I knew what he was signalling. It was transparent to the merest idiot that the steward did not want to face his master until the doctor had been found. I could understand that. If Marcus had received another ransom note, he would be more than usually upset.

‘It had better be Malodius,’ the steward said.

‘Well, in that case, you had best be quick,’ Aulus said. ‘I can see him, through the spyhole, coming now.’ Sure enough, a moment later there was the faint clatter of hooves and cartwheels in the lane.

The steward brightened, happy that there was something he could do. ‘I’ll go out and stop him before he goes round to the back — he can’t get past the slave cart anyway.’ He bustled off, and a moment later we heard the sound of muffled cursing from the gate and a great deal of snorting as the horses were backed up.

‘So,’ Aulus said in a grumbling tone, as the commotion died away. ‘I’m returned to normal duties. And about time too. That steward’s had me standing sentry for so many hours I began to think I’d soon be taking root.’ He took a step towards me. ‘And if he has quite finished what he’s doing with that cloak, perhaps I can have it back sometime, before I freeze to death.’

I was a guest of Marcus’s and of course there was no threat, but Aulus is not the sort of man to argue with. I was already in the process of removing the offending article before I took in the force of what he’d said. ‘If who’s finished with the cloak?’ I said, pausing in the act of loosening the ties. ‘I thought I was the one who’d borrowed it. Do you mean Junio, my slave?’

Aulus did not have a lot of forehead, but he furrowed what he had. ‘I meant that confounded chief slave, naturally. He came here this morning and demanded it. Told me that it was needed to test out an idea. I might have known he wanted it for you.’

‘I didn’t ask. .’ I began, and stopped. I was going to protest that it was not my doing that he’d lost his cloak, but since I was still actually wearing it, I could see that this was unlikely to convince.

Aulus misinterpreted my comment, anyway. ‘I dare say you didn’t specify that he should borrow mine, but of course it had to be my cloak he chose to use — he’s always had it in for me, that man. I had a niche to shelter in, he said, and I would be all right. He ought to try it sometime, with just a tunic on. But he’s the senior steward, so I hadn’t any choice. I simply do as I’m told. All the same,’ he bent towards me so that his massive face was just an inch from mine, ‘if you have quite finished your little experiments, I’d like to have it back.’

I stripped it off and handed it to him — anything to make him straighten up. The whiff of onions and bad breath was overpowering. He didn’t move.

‘What did the steward want it for, in any case?’

‘Why are you asking me? To see if he could be recognised from a distance, when the hood was up, he said.’ Aulus’s face took on a different look. ‘I hope you found it useful?’ he said, suggestively.

He was asking for a tip. Now I was really in a fix. I had no money with me — I hadn’t brought my purse — but to refuse him was to double my offence. And I could make no sense at all of Aulus’s account. Who could have asked the steward to do anything like that? The doctor, perhaps? Pretending to test out his so-called theory — when he must have known the answer all along? I could see that sounded feeble, but it was the only explanation I could find. ‘The steward didn’t borrow your cloak on my account,’ I said. ‘My slave found it hanging in the servants’ room, and obviously, since you weren’t using it. . But here he is in person. You can ask him for yourself.’

But there was no time for asking questions. Junio was as pink and flustered as the steward had been before, and he made no excuses for addressing me without any of the usual courtesies. ‘Master! There you are! Thank Jupiter I’ve found you and you’re safe and sound. You are wanted in the house. We have been looking for you everywhere.’

‘We?’

‘Myself, and Cilla and Porphyllia and — when we couldn’t find you — several of Marcus’s household too. There were already servants searching all the outbuildings and grounds, trying to find the doctor. He seems to have disappeared as well.’

‘That is what I’m doing here,’ I said. ‘I came to help the steward look for him.’

Junio ran a hand across his brow. ‘Well, thank all the gods I found you. When I came back with that drink of mead you asked for, and you were nowhere to be found, I thought — well, it doesn’t matter what I thought — but you had us all concerned. Then someone suggested looking over here — and there you were. As safe as anything!’

I had to smile at that. He sounded more indignant than relieved, the way worried people do — like a mother when her errant child comes home. ‘Meanwhile my cup of mead was going cold, I suppose?’ I teased.

He realised that he must have sounded inappropriate. He offered me his arm and added, in a humbler tone of voice, ‘I am sincerely glad to find you, master. Do you wish me to assist you to your room?’ He was already tugging me into the court, and I was happy that he should. It solved the problem of Aulus and his tip — for the moment anyway.

‘I’ll talk to you again,’ I said to him, and allowed Junio to lead me away. The last I saw of the gate-keeper, he was scowling after us and wrapping his cloak round himself with the air of someone going to meet the beasts.

‘You say that I am wanted?’ I said to Junio, as he led the way into the house by the servants’ corridor again. ‘Aren’t we going to Marcus in the atrium? I hear there’s been another ransom note.’

He shook his head. ‘Marcus hasn’t asked for you,’ he said. ‘We are going back to your sleeping room. Marcus said you were to have some rest, and you are more than ready for it, by the look of you. And. .’

He was right. I had been so interested in the doctor’s disappearance that I had forgotten my own ills, but I was much more weary than I had realised. However, I would not admit to that, and I tried to lean less heavily on his arm.

‘And?’ I enquired. ‘There was another thing?’

He nodded. ‘There is someone there I know you’ll want to see.’

‘And that is?’ The doctor? Myrna’s mother? Her sister? Even Lallius? I was imagining a hundred possibilities, but none was as welcome as the truth turned out to be.

Junio could disguise his glee no longer and he broke into a grin. ‘Master, I thought you would have guessed. It’s Gwellia — your wife. She came with Kurso through the back gate just a little while ago. They’ve just got back from Glevum and she wants to talk to you.’