Requiem for a Slave

Sixteen

They were entering the forum when I caught up with them, and by the time that I had stopped and caught my breath enough to speak — bending over and resting my hands upon my knees, while my chest heaved with the effort of unaccustomed exercise — the bearers had drawn the litter to a halt and Quintus himself was getting out of it.

‘Quintus, Decurion. .’ I managed between gasps, positioning myself where he’d catch sight of me. ‘A thousand pardons for pursuing you. .’

He gave me a look I shall remember all my life: such a mixture of outrage, contempt and disbelief that I stopped in confusion. The tanner would have no need of Glypto’s caustic brews if he could have borrowed such a look to treat his hides — so scathing that it could have stripped mere hairs off in a trice.

Quintus’s tone, when he addressed me, was just as withering. ‘Citizen Libertus? Do I believe my eyes?’ He sounded quite aghast, and, looking around, I saw that I’d attracted a little crowd of spectators. ‘What are you doing here, and in that state of dress? Must you continually make an exhibition of yourself?’

I glanced down at my unconventional attire, undid my makeshift belt and pulled my toga down around me more decently again, painfully aware of its descending loops. ‘I’m sorry, councillor,’ I panted. It was wise to sound contrite. What I had done was a technical offence — a citizen is supposed to wear a toga in public at all times, especially in the forum, and I had just dishonoured that official badge of Roman pride. I could only hope that stickler Quintus would not choose to make an issue of my lapse. He was very clearly the sort of man who might, so I went on hastily, between painful gasps of breath, ‘But it was essential. . mightiness. . that I should speak to you at once. . on a matter of considerable. . urgency.’

He looked at me coldly. ‘Concerning what?’

I was still panting heavily, but I managed to get out, ‘It concerns the slave that my patron lent to me — the one that went missing from my workshop yesterday. I understand you put an order out for his arrest?’

If Quintus’s manner had been frosty up till now, it was positively dripping icicles at this. ‘I warned you at the time that I intended to do that. Your weakness for the boy has clearly blinded you. The evidence was clear for anyone to see — the empty purse was found upon his person, did you know? Quite enough to have him tried for robbery and possibly for homicide as well. To say nothing of the way that he had run off from his post — against your explicit orders as I understand.’

Of course, I hadn’t known that they had found the purse. As Quintus had expressed it, even I had to concede that things did not sound good, and the group of spectators (who had been following all this with fascinated ears) began to hoot and jeer. I said, with what tatters of dignity were left, ‘I’m convinced the lad is not a criminal. Just let me talk to him. I’m sure he can explain.’

One lone voice in the crowd called out in my support. ‘That’s right, councillor. Give the lad a chance before they nail him up. That’s only justice!’

My unexpected ally was shouted down, of course, and snatched at and severely jostled by the mob, but he gave me the confidence to press the point. ‘Just tell me where you’re holding my little slave-boy, Decurion Quintus, and I’ll go there at once.’ I paused, debating whether to offer payment for the privilege, or whether Quintus would choose to be offended by the thought and accuse me of attempting to bribe a councillor.

The patrician forehead had furrowed in a frown. One hand clutched his toga front and he lifted the other in a commanding stance, as if he were posing for a statue of himself. Then, raising his voice and addressing the onlookers rather than myself, he said, in the formal Latin of the court, ‘Citizens! Libertus! You misunderstand. I did put out an order to apprehend this slave and was intending to take him to the jail, but by the time I reached the garrison it seems I was too late. I learned that the boy had already been detained. And with incriminating evidence, as I said before.’

It took me a moment to take in the enormity of this ‘You mean. .’

He looked at me with condescension. ‘Exactly, citizen. I do not have your slave. And, before you ask, I do not know who has. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a meeting to attend. Important business concerning candidates for the vacant ordo seat, and we want to get arrangements finished before your patron comes.’ And with that he turned away and hurried up the steps.

There was sporadic clapping at this little speech — and a good deal of jeering and merriment at my expense — but after the decurion had left there was nothing else to see, and one by one the onlookers began to drift away.

Clearly there was nothing further here for me either. I was shocked and sickened by the news I had received — the so-called evidence would be almost certain to ensure that anyone accused, in particular a slave, was likely to be tortured until he had confessed — but there was no help for it. I was no closer to knowing where Minimus was held. No doubt Junio would be waiting for me at the workshop now and might have useful information about the messenger, and together we could make renewed enquiries. I ignored the few remaining gawpers, readjusted my dishevelled tunic folds as best I could, put on my cloak again and set off for my workshop as quickly as I could.

I was half-expecting to find Radixrapum waiting at my door, demanding the money that I owed him, but although the street was crammed as usual with passers-by — pedestrians and street-vendors and various scurrying slaves — the shop was closed and shuttered, as I‘d left it yesterday, and there was no sign of the turnip-seller anywhere nearby. Neither did it seem that Junio and Maximus were here. Never mind, I would find a stool and sit and wait for them.

I went over to unshutter the door and go inside — I had never invested in an elaborate lock — but the heavy board was not securely in place. I would have to speak to Gwellia and Junio about that; obviously they had not pulled it properly across the night before, though it seemed they’d shuttered the window space all right. The room was darkened as I pushed the door ajar.

I was about to enter, but suddenly I paused. I knew it was ridiculous, but now that I was here I was all at once reluctant to go into the room — the lingering memory of Lucius’s corpse was too much in my thoughts. I even imagined that I could still detect a faint unpleasant smell. Besides, I told myself, the workroom had yet to be ritually cleansed (though I had spoken to the priest about it at the naming day), and if I were to enter it again, this morning’s careful purification of myself would be undone. There was no need to go in there till the priest had been — I had my tools and everything I needed for the job I had to do, and Junio could meet me just as well outside.

So I reached around and found Minimus’s stool, then took up my position in the outer shop, where I could keep a lookout for Junio when he came. However, I was not destined to be long alone. The tanner had come out into the street and was heatedly talking to a customer at his gate, clearly haggling about the price of skins. He looked over and saw me, and raised one hand in a surprised salute. He went back to his wrangling for a little while, but — though with his crossed eyes it was hard to tell — he seemed to be glancing in my direction all the time.

So I was not entirely astonished, when the deal was struck and his visitor had gone off with his piece of hide, to see my neighbour hasten over, wiping his hands on his sacking apron as he came and baring his one tooth in his gummy smile.

‘My greetings, citizen,’ he said in his cracked voice, raising his usual mumble to a louder tone. ‘How nice to see you here.’ His uneven eyes were nearly popping from his head and he was clearly bursting with surprise at seeing me at all.

I could not altogether fathom why. Of course, he knew about the army cart — he’d mentioned it to Gwellia and my family yesterday — but nothing could be more commonplace than my coming to the shop, if only to arrange to have it cleansed. Most likely he was simply curious as to who had died, and I was not anxious to encourage him, so I stripped off my cloak as though I meant to work and said blandly, ‘Where else should I be? The naming day is over and I have contracts to complete.’ To give emphasis to this, I reached across to my precious stockpile of imported stone and began to sort the contents according to the quality of colour and evenness of grain.

‘Of course.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Only I heard that you’d had some kind of accident. I was afraid. .’ he tailed off, spreading his stained hands apologetically. ‘But I see that it was just another of Glypto’s foolish tales.’

‘Glypto told you I’d had an accident?’ I looked up at him, surprised. I had half my mind upon the stones by now and, before I really thought it out, I blurted, ‘Did you send a messenger to my house saying so?’

He looked at me as if I’d taken leave of all my wits. ‘That I didn’t, citizen. Though I knew that one had been. Your wife and slave both came here yesterday, and I called to assure them that I’d seen you safe and well. .’

‘Of course!’ I murmured apologetically, selecting a particularly pretty piece of bluestone from the pile.

He ignored that observation, and went on, ‘But when Glypto came to me this morning with this tale, naturally I assumed that they were right and I was wrong, and you’d come to some harm after you left here. And when he spoke of hearing someone on your premises, obviously I supposed that it was one of them come back. So what would be the point of sending to your house?’

It was my turn to boggle. ‘Wait a moment. Let me understand. Glypto heard this after my wife and son were here?’

He gave the ugly grin that showed his solitary tooth. ‘Haven’t I just said so, citizen?’

I put the bluestone down and shook my head in disbelief. ‘But this morning I was at the bulla ceremony of my grandchild at my house, and anyone who knows me knew that I was there. Even my customers attended or sent gifts. Who could possibly have come here to the shop?’

The tanner made that spreading gesture with his hands again. ‘Probably there wasn’t anyone at all. I told you it was only one of Glypto’s tales — and he’s half-crazy with the tanning fumes. He gets these things confused. He half-heard something from the courtyard in the dusk, I expect, and invented all these tales of people prowling in the dark. Convinced himself, I shouldn’t be surprised.’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps my wife is right, and I should sell him on.’

But I was hardly listening. ‘In the dark?’ I echoed. This wasn’t making sense. ‘I thought you said “this morning”?’

‘That’s when I heard of it.’

‘But Glypto heard something from the courtyard “in the dusk”. What was he doing there?’ I had visions of him sending the old slave out at night on purpose to spy on my workshop through the gate.

However, I was disabused of that. The tanner looked abashed. ‘My wife had left him out there as a punishment. She was so angry with him for staying out so long when he was supposed to be with you yesterday that she put him on short rations and shut him out all night. Gave him a pallet in the courtyard and told him to keep watch — that’s how he came to hear the noise, or he says he did. He only half-hears things at the best of times.’

‘What noise was this?’ I was more and more intrigued. Was this the famous green man come again?

My neighbour shook his head. ‘Pay no attention, pavement-maker. I should have known that it was just his foolishness. You are clearly fit and well, so what does it matter what he thinks he heard? Very likely it was fancy, and there was no one here at all.’

‘All the same, I’d like to talk to him,’ I said. ‘I believe he sometimes sees more things than you suppose.’

A strange expression crossed the tanner’s face. ‘For instance, he insists that he saw the army calling here and taking a body from your workshop, just after he came back from giving you the coals.’ He looked at me slyly. ‘In fact, I thought I saw the cart myself and the soldiers putting something into it, though I could not be certain that it was a corpse. After all, as I said to my wife, surely you would have mentioned it to us if you had a dead man on the premises — especially since you came to borrow light and coals from us.’

I wondered how best to answer that without insulting him. ‘But if there was a body, you knew it wasn’t me,’ I said, evading his unspoken question by asking one myself. ‘Because you saw me leaving later on? So when my family arrived, convinced that I was hurt, naturally you were very curious?’

He seemed oblivious of any suggestion that he might have been deliberately spying on my shop. ‘Exactly,’ he went on in his curious cracked tone, ‘and when I visited the shop — only to reassure your wife, of course — there was no sign that there had been any death at all, and your family clearly had no idea of one.’ He sighed and made a small dismissive gesture with his hands. ‘So I decided that Glypto was at his tricks again — which only goes to prove it’s no good asking him. So I shouldn’t bother, citizen.’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, there’s something which I don’t know about?’

So that was it. He knew about the cart and he was offering to trade: information about the identity of the corpse in exchange for a chance to ask Glypto what he’d heard.

I abandoned all pretence at sorting stones and sighed. This tale would be all over Glevum before dusk. ‘Well, it is a little difficult. .’ I began, thinking uncomfortably of Pedronius. ‘It’s a delicate matter and not wholly mine to share.’

He interrupted me. ‘It concerns that decurion who came here yesterday, I suppose. People in high places — is that it, citizen?’ He tapped his nose as if to indicate that he could keep a secret if he chose.

I clutched at the straw that he was offering. ‘Well, in a fashion, I suppose it is.’ It was not entirely a lie. Quintus could certainly be said to be involved. If the tanner chose to think there was something more to this and that I was somehow acting on the decurion’s behalf, that was hardly my responsibility — or so I told myself.

My neighbour was looking expectantly at me. ‘The body of one of the rebels from the wood, perhaps? I wondered if it was, and that’s what Glypto saw. I heard a rumour that the ordo was resolved to sort them out before His Excellence returned, even if it led to executions without trial.’

‘The dead man was not a rebel,’ I said heatedly.

‘So there was a dead man?’ His tone was so knowing that I realized — too late — that I had made things worse and he was now convinced that I was conspiring with Quintus to conceal a death which might cause the councillor some embarrassment. There were obvious dangers in having that story circulate.

I made a swift decision. ‘I’m afraid there was, though it wasn’t a criminal, or any of my household or family. It was not even a customer, in fact. It was Lucius the pie-seller, who happened by chance to be calling at the shop because I’d given him a few things recently.’

‘Great Mars! What happened?’

‘He was overcome quite unexpectedly, it seems, and died. And when you saw me with the turnips, I was on my way to tell his mother. She was happy that the army was going to bury him because she didn’t have the means of doing so herself.’ I was folding my cloak into a parcel as I spoke and putting it into a space below the counter-top (no doubt where Minimus had kept his knuckle-bones), so that I did not have to look the tanner in the face — although there was nothing actually false in this account. I simply hadn’t mentioned the most essential bits — murder, robbery and the disappearance of my slave.

He looked rather disappointed. ‘Just a pie-seller? A man who might as easily have dropped dead in the street? And what has your wealthy customer to do with that?’

He was too insistent — and too intelligent. I decided that the truth was now my best defence. I leaned a little closer, as though the paving-stones had ears, and murmured, ‘I wasn’t anxious for the news to get about, because I was working on a commission at the time and I was afraid the customer would cancel. It is Pedronius, and you know what he’s like. He might imagine that the work was cursed, because I’d come across the corpse right in the middle of constructing it. I was halfway through preparing the site to put it in when I came back and found the body in my shop.’

He evidently revelled in the confidence. He nodded sagely. ‘I can see how Pedronius might worry about that. Just as well the mosaic wasn’t in your workshop at the time — but I can vouch that it wasn’t, if you ever should need me to. Might be worth a few sesterces to you some time, citizen.’

I was on my guard. Was he attempting a spot of blackmail? ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I would have seen it when I called in to see your wife last night, of course.’ He gave me a peculiarly furtive cross-eyed grin. ‘Funny a pie-seller should choose your workshop as a place to die. And to think that I was in there shortly afterwards and never knew.’ He tapped his nose again. ‘Well, I can see that you don’t want the story spread around, but — considering that I lent you light and embers yesterday — you might satisfy my curiosity at least. Where exactly did you find the corpse?’

It was a kind of blackmail — of a moral sort. I tried to deflect it. ‘You could come in and I’d show you if I’d had the workshop cleansed, but, of course, I haven’t, and we don’t want to court ill luck.’

It would take more than bad omens to put the tanner off. ‘I was in there with your family, so it makes no difference. I’ll make sure I ritually wash my hands and face and make an extra sacrifice to the household gods tonight.’ He gave me that one-toothed grin of his again. ‘Some of us are very careful about that sort of thing.’

I knew when I was beaten. I could see what he would do if I refused to let him in — spread the story that my shop was cursed because I didn’t pay proper homage to the gods. ‘There is nothing particular to mark the spot,’ I said forlornly, but it didn’t help. He was already waiting at the door. I led the way into the inner room, crossed to the window space and took the shutter down.

‘Over there-’ I was about to gesture vaguely at the place when I stopped abruptly short.

The tanner beside me caught his breath. ‘Great Mars and all the gods!’

For there was something on the floor, almost exactly where Lucius had been. Something in a tunic and horribly inert. I had been right in my suspicion of a smell. There was a body lying sprawled out on its front and it was very clearly dead.

The tanner turned to me. His eyes were strangely bright. ‘Is that the pie-seller? The army brought him back?’

I shook my head, too full of shock and grief to speak, for I recognized the lifeless object on the floor. The last time I had seen it, it was a living man and he was shouting ‘Turnips!’ in the street.