A Coin for the Ferryman

Chapter One

I stood at the entrance to the huge basilica and sighed. In a moment I was going to have to walk the length of that impressive central aisle, with its massive pillars towering up on either side. I knew that all eyes would be upon me as I went. There are few things more impressive than a Roman ritual, and this occasion was as formal as they come.

Not that I usually have much to do with ceremonial, apart from the public sacrifices which all citizens are expected to attend; and even then — as a humble ex-slave and mosaic-maker — I am generally watching from behind a pillar, or some other inconspicuous position at the back.

Today, however, I was centre stage, dressed in my best toga, which was still giving off a whiff of the sulphur fumes in which it had been whitened specially for the occasion. (Fortunately the other cleaning agent — the urine collected in great pots from the households and businesses around — had been largely rinsed out of it by the fuller’s slaves who trampled the garment afterwards in clean water and fullers’ earth.) My wife had insisted on my having new sandals for the day, and also at her behest I had submitted to a painful hour at the barber’s shop — having my nose- and ear-hairs plucked, my cheeks rasped and my thin grey hair rubbed with bats’ blood and grease to stimulate its growth. I felt as scrubbed and polished as a turnip ready for the pot.

My appearance was as nothing, though, compared to the resplendent glory of the presiding magistrate. His Excellence Marcus Aurelius Septimus sat enthroned at the dais end of the great basilica, flanked by a dozen other eminent officials and councillors — including an ambassador from Rome — and accompanied by a bevy of attendant slaves. His toga was woven of the finest wool, white as milk and boasting a purple border so wide that it put the lesser magistrates to shame. He had his favourite golden torc round his neck — a present from some Celtic vassal chief — an imperial seal ring on his hand and a wreath of fresh bay leaves anchored in his boyish curling hair, to signify his great authority.

And certainly he had authority. As the local representative and personal friend of Pertinax, the previous governor of the province, he had always been a person to be reckoned with; and now — since Pertinax was promoted to the prefecture of Rome, second only in importance to the Emperor himself — Marcus Septimus had become overnight one of the most powerful men in the entire Empire. This ceremony was the last over which he would preside before he journeyed to the imperial city to congratulate his friend, and it seemed the whole of Glevum had come out to stare.

People were jostling behind the pillars, elbowing and craning to get a better view. Even the official copy-scribes and account-clerks for the town, who usually worked in the little rooms which flanked the area, had given up all pretence of writing anything today and had come out of their offices to watch.

A trumpeter came forward and blew a long, high note. The crowd stopped fidgeting and there was a sudden hush.

‘In the name of the Divine Emperor Commodus Antoninus Pius Felix Exsuperatorius, ruler of Commodiana and all the provinces overseas. .’

There was a little snigger from the assembled company at this, and a muffled jeer or two as well. People had become accustomed to the titles Commodus gave himself — the Dutiful, the Fortunate, the Excellent — and even when he declared himself to be a god, the reincarnation of Hercules (instead of decently waiting until he died for deification, like other emperors), few of his subjects really minded very much. Renaming all the months in honour of himself had not had much effect; unless there was imperial business to be done, most people conveniently forgot and went on using the familiar names. But this latest whim, of changing the name of mighty Rome itself to ‘Commodiana’, was a step too far. Somebody was bold enough to hiss ‘For shame!’ and was carried off struggling between a pair of guards. The fellow would pay dearly for his impudence, no doubt.

The herald looked discomfited at the interruption, but went on manfully, ‘This special court is now in session. Let the first supplicants approach the magistrates.’

It was my cue. Slowly I walked up between the crowds towards the central group. I was carrying a ceremonial wand, and my sandals were ringing on the patterned floor. The air was still full of the sacrificial smoke from the official offering on the imperial shrine, and the light struck slantways from the high windows overhead. It illuminated the official inscriptions carved in stone, the vivid red and ochre of the semicircular ‘tribunal’ alcoves at each end — with their wall paintings of simulated drapes — and the life-size statue of the frowning Emperor. It was intended to be awesome, and I was duly awed.

However, I made my way to stand before my patron, in the place which the chief petitioner always occupied. ‘I bring a petition against Lucius Julianus Catilius in the matter of a slave he claims to own,’ I muttered. A little frisson ran around the room. Lucius Julianus Catilius was the visitor from Rome.

The man in question looked at me impassively but rose with dignity, and came down to stand beside me in front of the dais on which he had so recently occupied a chair. The fashionable magnificence of his cloak and shoes, and the width of his aristocratic stripe, which rivalled Marcus’s own, brought a gasp of admiration from the onlookers. Lucius Julianus was a patrician through and through: smooth, tall, silver-haired, with a hooked nose and an air of permanent disdain.

I had met him only once before, and that was this morning on the forum steps, when he had used an age-old formula to buy my slave from me for the minimum possible amount. He acknowledged me now with a distant nod, and an arch of his aristocratic eyebrow.

His Excellence Marcus Septimus looked unsmilingly at me. ‘You are Longinus Flavius Libertus?’ he enquired, as though I were a stranger, and not a trusted confidant who had been under his personal protection for years.

I made the expected obeisance, cleared my throat and agreed that this was indeed my name. I even remembered not to look behind me as I spoke. I knew what I would see if I did so: the slave in question, my servant-cum-assistant Junio, standing behind me like a sacrificial lamb between two self-important officials of the court.

He was dressed in a humiliating fashion now, I was aware — no tunic, only a loincloth wrapped round his waist, his feet bare and a sort of conical slave cap on his head. It was the sort of thing I’d never asked of him in all the years since I acquired him. I had him from the slave market when he was very young — how old, exactly, he did not know himself. He might have been six or seven at the most, but he was so small and underfed and terrified that I’d taken pity on his plight and parted with some coins. Not many, even so. I think the slave-trader was grateful to be rid of the pathetic little wretch. I wonder what he would have thought to see the strapping, tousle-haired young man walking dutifully behind me in the basilica today.

It had proved the best bargain that I had ever made, I thought. Junio had been the most faithful of attendants and he was intelligent besides: quick to learn and adept at helping me with my designs in my mosaic workshop in the town. He had slept on a mat beside my bed and served my every need. And now it was all over. He was my slave no more.

Lucius Julianus identified himself and then said in his well-bred Roman tones, ‘It concerns the matter of the slave named Junio, here present. Let Marcus be the judge.’

Junio came forward between the two of us and prostrated himself at Marcus’s feet, as if to kiss his sandals. He did not rise but stayed there on hands and knees.

I looked at Marcus and I swallowed hard. He was my patron but I was still in awe of him. ‘I assert that this man is not a slave, but free according to the law of the Quirites.’ It was an ambiguous formula, of course: what I was really claiming was that he was a slave no more, but my throat tightened as I struck the boy lightly on the shoulder with the rod. Junio was legally the possession of the Roman visitor now, and it was still possible that he would play us false and simply decide to keep the boy.

Marcus looked at Lucius. ‘Do you deny this claim?’

The man from Rome said nothing, but looked at us with all the condescension of a senator forced to join a children’s game. Marcus asked again. Again there was no answer. Then — as I held my breath — Marcus challenged for the third and final time, and still the senator made no reply at all.

The law was satisfied and it all seemed to happen very quickly after that. Marcus took the rod and touched Junio on the back. ‘Then, by the power invested in me by the Emperor, I rule that all impediments to manumission are in this case void, and before all witnesses I adjudge him free.’ He touched the rod on Junio’s shoulders one by one. ‘You may arise.’

Junio rose slowly to his feet, a free man for the first time in his life. Vindicated, literally — by the staff or vindicta. One of Marcus’s red-haired slaves appeared, bearing a tunic and a pair of shoes, and Junio followed him into a vacant writing room to put them on. There was a little smattering of applause, but not a lot. The crowd had come to see the visitor from Rome and hear Marcus’s farewell speech. This little household drama had bewildered them.

However, it wasn’t over yet. I stepped up once again to the petitioner’s place and presently my ex-slave came to join me there, now dressed like any other freeman in the town.

‘Libertus, you have a further petition to bring before this court?’ Marcus was obliged to ask the question, although the whole form of these proceedings had been his idea.

‘I have, Excellence.’ In fact, the most important part was yet to come. I cleared my throat and started on my plea. I had practised the speech so many times that I could say it in my sleep. I was childless, I argued, and thus legally entitled to abrogate an heir. (I could not acquire the one I wanted by adoptio — buying a child from his father fictitiously three times — since Junio didn’t have a father I could buy him from.)

I advanced the proofs that I met the requirements of the law — one of which, these days, was that he should not be my slave. As a freeman, however, he could give his own consent. ‘I am clearly more than eighteen years his senior,’ I said, not dwelling on the matter, since I had no formal proof of Junio’s age, ‘and I am demonstrably capable of marriage since I have a wife. Furthermore,’ I added wickedly, ‘by permitting me to abrogate the boy, the court would also save itself expense, since it would otherwise have to appoint a legal curator for him until he’s twenty-five.’ Again I did not raise the issue of how one might determine when that age was reached.

It was all an elaborate, but necessary, charade. The laws were fashioned to protect the young (unscrupulous men had adopted wealthy orphans in the past and, having thus legally acquired the estate, promptly disinherited the child) but Junio had no possessions of his own in any case.

My patron listened carefully to what I had to say, though he had coached me in every word of it. ‘Normally such abrogations should be heard in Rome,’ he said ‘but the Emperor has granted a rescript in this case, and has written in answer to my formal preliminary request to say that the petition is approved, provided that the Praetor and magistrates are satisfied?’

It was another fiction, naturally. Once the agreement of the Emperor had been obtained, the opinion of the council hardly mattered. It was unlikely that Commodus had really taken any personal interest in the case, I knew, but Marcus had powerful friends in Rome these days. The consenting seal on the letter had probably been granted at Pertinax’s behest.

It did the trick. A spokesman for the council rose and agreed that they approved. Clearly — given the circumstances — they hadn’t needed to consult.

Marcus turned to Junio. ‘Do you consent to this arrangement?’

Junio could hardly speak for grinning, but he managed, ‘I consent.’

Marcus turned to the assembled company. ‘Then I pronounce that Longinus Flavius Junio should be henceforth the legal son and heir of Libertus the pavement-maker, with full rights as a Roman citizen.’

So it was done. I was a paterfamilias at last. Another little red-haired slave appeared, this time with a toga for my adopted son. It was a present from Marcus, or more probably the lady Julia — she was far more generous than her husband and understood how much this gesture meant to me. Junio was clearly absolutely thrilled. From the moment that he put it on, assisted by the slave, he looked more like a proper citizen than I had ever done and I realised for the first time that he probably did have Roman blood in him. After all, he was born into slavery — no doubt the product of his owner and some female serving girl.

There was only one thing remaining to be done, and Lucius was looking expectantly at me. I reached into my toga folds and produced the purse of money which my fictional opponent would expect for his part in the proceedings. It was a considerable sum — to me in any case — arranged a day or two ago with Lucius’s chief slave: a sandy-headed fellow with calculating eyes, whose expensive olive tunic could not disguise his air of general menace, and whose steely courtesy — combined with the flexing of his enormous hands — had somehow induced me to agree to rather more than I could comfortably afford.

Lucius weighed the purse a moment in his hand, rather disdainfully I thought, before he slipped it into a belt-pouch underneath his robes. Then he turned and with conscious dignity went back to occupy his former seat, while I bowed myself backwards by a pace or two. Junio did the same. Then, having completed the formalities, we made our way out of the basilica into the brightness of the forum, leaving Marcus and his fellow councillors to deal with the other official business of the day.

The forum was full of business, as it always was. Colourful stalls and fortune-tellers huddled round the walls, scribes and money-changers plied their trade in booths, and self-important citizens went striding up the colonnaded path, or stood on the steps of the basilica to be seen.

Gwellia, my wife, was waiting for us there. She had been watching the proceedings inside the hall, though of course, as a woman she’d played no part in them — a female is not legally entitled to adopt, being technically only a child herself in law. She smiled, but gave Junio only a very brief embrace — not because she was not delighted to greet him as her son, but because public displays of emotion are not expected of Roman citizens.

Besides, there was a little sadness in the greeting too. We had hoped — Gwellia and I — to adopt another child, an infant orphan girl, whose remaining family had fled into exile and left her behind. It would have been a much simpler matter than adopting Junio, since she was both female and freeborn — merely a question of fictitiously buying her, just once, from someone representing her missing family.

But events had not transpired as Gwellia had hoped. We had taken the child into the household for a moon or so and she had not thrived. She refused to eat and grew quite pale and sick — used, I suppose, to childish company, though perhaps also partly because she was not fully weaned. She proved to be a constant worry in the house, attempting to climb into the fire and eating Gwellia’s dyes. In the end we were forced to place her with a family in the woods, a woman with several children of her own who had looked after the infant sometimes when her mother was alive. The joyful reunion was almost unbearably touching to see, and the decision was clearly for the best, especially since the few denarii we paid towards Longina’s keep were an enormous bonus for the family. We’d declared ourselves her sponsors (simply a matter of a statement to the court) so she was still officially our ward, but it had been a painful decision for my wife. Gwellia had always longed for children but we two had been wrenched apart when we were young and sold to slavery, and by the time we were reunited we were too old to have any natural offspring of our own.

Nevertheless, she now had a strapping son. He’d called her ‘Mother’ and it pleased her, I could see. ‘Perhaps I should find a litter for you,’ he went on. ‘There is to be a banquet for us all at Marcus’s villa tonight, and you will want to get home and prepare.’

I shook my head. ‘Junio, you are not a slave,’ I said. ‘If we want transport, we will find a hiring carriage that will take all three of us. And Cilla too, if she is still about.’

‘Here, master!’ Cilla was at my elbow, flourishing a fish. ‘I was only over at the fish market buying this, but they had so many good fish in the pool that it took me a little moment to decide. I’m sorry, master. The mistress sent me, but I did not mean to leave her unattended for so long.’

I nodded. Cilla was my wife’s attendant slave, given to me some little time ago by Marcus Septimus in return for a favour I had done for him. She was a plump, resourceful little thing, and Gwellia was very fond of her. And so, I knew, was my adopted son, who was looking at her with approval now.

It was mutual. She looked him up and down. ‘My word, Master Junio, you look so elegant,’ she said. ‘You are so Roman in that toga, I hardly dare to speak.’ It was nonsense, though. Cilla would have chattered cheerfully to Jupiter himself, if he had happened to appear in Glevum.

‘There will be time enough for compliments a little later on,’ I said. ‘After the banquet, when we get back to it. In the meantime we should go and find that cart.’

Cilla had turned a charming shade of pink. She knew exactly what I was referring to. The banquet had been arranged by Marcus for his Roman guest, and my little family had been invited too. It was a kind of triple compliment to us — a token of respect and thanks for me, a celebration for Junio, and an opportunity for me to informally emancipate the girl, by announcing before the assembled company of Roman citizens that Cilla was now free and inviting her to join us for the final course. It was all the ceremony needed to free a female slave.

‘I can’t believe it, master. Me, at such a feast! With Lucius Julianus there as well. And the mistress has given me such a pretty gown.’

I grinned. No doubt Lucius Julianus would look disdainfully at us, but Marcus was such a power now that an invitation to his table was an honour to be sought, however lowly the other guests might be. ‘Then, when you and Junio are wed, I hope you remember who made it possible and are duly grateful to His Excellence. I don’t have the wealth and contacts to host such a feast myself — nor the servants either, especially after this!’

Gwellia nodded. ‘There is only little Kurso to run the household now.’ She said it ruefully. Poor Kurso’d had a dreadful master when he was young, and could still move faster backwards than forwards. He had come to us as a kitchen slave but he was so nervous and clumsy that he was not much use at all, except outdoors. He was happy enough caring for the animals and plants, but in the house he was a liability — likely to drop what he was carrying if you spoke to him. He had already cost me a great many bowls.

Junio must have read my thoughts. ‘Don’t worry, master — Father, I should say — Cilla and I will be living very close to you. The lady Julia has arranged for us to have that piece of land so we can build a roundhouse just next to yours. And it won’t be long before we can begin. She’s already had the standing timber removed, and she’s sending a group of land slaves to clear the site today.’

I nodded. ‘She mentioned it to me. Cilla was her personal servant once, she said, and this is to be a sort of dowry, I suppose. It’s very generous of her.’

‘She has never forgotten that you saved her life. And Marcus would be fairly easy to persuade. The land is only forest — he won’t miss that small piece,’ my wife said wryly, adding with a smile. ‘It’s just the kind of gift your patron would approve. Something generous which didn’t cost him anything at all.’

I knew what she meant. I have received a number of such gifts before, including my own roundhouse and young Cilla herself. My patron has made a habit of asking for my help in matters which might otherwise be politically embarrassing, but refuses to ‘insult’ me, as he says, by offering me money for my services. As his business always takes me from my own, it was an insult I could easily have borne.

I laughed. ‘Well, I am grateful that Junio and Cilla will be next door to us. Though we shall have to think about another slave, I suppose. We can’t expect these two to go on serving us — though I suppose that Cilla might go on ahead right now, and try to find a carriage for us at the gates.’ It would have to be outside the walls, of course. Wheeled traffic is not permitted in the city during the hours of daylight, except for military purposes.

Cilla dimpled. ‘That won’t be necessary, master. It’s already done. And here are your messengers to tell you so.’

I glanced up. Threading their way through the assorted throng, dodging round the leather merchant and the live eel stall, were the two red-headed slaves who had presented Junio with his garments earlier. I knew the lads: one of Marcus’s carefully selected ‘pairs’ — servants matched for colouring and height; a piece of conspicuous extravagance with which he dazzled visitors to his country house. Except that these two, being rather young, were no longer properly a pair at all: the younger of them, Minimus, was quickly outstretching his older counterpart.

It was Minimus now who came panting up to me. ‘We have found you a carriage, master. .’ he began.

‘Waiting for you at the southern gate,’ Maximus chimed in, out of breath after catching up: they often talked like this, one of them completing what the other had begun, as if they’d worked together for so long that they shared a single thought.

‘Thank you.’ I reached into my toga for my purse, and remembered, too late, that I had given it away. It didn’t matter for the carriage, I had money at the house, but I had nothing with me now with which to tip the slaves. ‘I’ll see you at the villa later on,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you something then.’

Maximus looked sideways at his fellow slave, who shrugged expressively, and turned back to me. ‘Didn’t His Excellence tell you, citizen? We are to serve you, while he’s overseas. .’

‘He says you are losing a couple of your slaves and will be glad of someone. .’

‘And since he’s closing up the house, he would only have had to sell us otherwise. .’

‘So we found your carriage for you, and now here we are!’ Minimus finished, with a triumphant air.

I looked at Gwellia, and she looked at me. It seemed that we’d acquired a pair of household slaves, though not perhaps the ones we would have chosen for ourselves. These lads would not be skilled in cookery, or used to cutting wood and the general rough and tumble of a roundhouse life. They were accustomed to the villa with its exquisite ways, and a whole hierarchy of slaves to do the menial tasks. But Marcus had arranged this, and I could not refuse.

‘Very well then, my temporary slaves. You may lead the way,’ I said, and we trooped across the forum and out into the street.

‘There is your carriage, master,’ Maximus began, indicating a hiring coach with leather curtains and a roof, and one of those devices on the wheels which counts the miles.

I hesitated. I prefer to make a bargain for the trip before we start — I am not convinced that these devices, clever as they are, don’t sometimes calculate more miles than they should. Perhaps it was as well that I demurred. A moment later and I would have missed the arrival of a flustered Kurso, perched on Marcus’s land cart by the look of it.

‘M-m-master,’ Kurso stammered, before he had even properly climbed down. ‘I am g-g-glad to see you. Your p-p-patron’s wife sent us. You must come at once.’ He flung himself before me. ‘They have f-f-found something in the g-g-ground that they were clearing for J-Junio and Cilla’s house.’