A Coin for the Ferryman

Chapter Sixteen

Standing on a windy hilltop in incipient rain, with the draught sneaking under your toga-hems and whistling round your knees while Stygius and half a dozen bored land slaves try to set fire to a corpse, is not a pleasant way to spend an afternoon — especially when your stomach is grumbling all the while. Add to this that Britannia is a gentle backwater, where most funerals continue to be held at night, with lighted torches and processions of hired mourners wailing through the dark — old traditions that have long ago been swept away in Rome — and you will understand why this hurried cremation, in broad daylight with no other witnesses but the slaves and Junio, and the identity of the corpse still a mystery, seemed very peculiar and discomfiting.

Of the actual ceremony, such as it was, the less said the better. Sufficient to report that I more or less remembered what I had to say and that — with the addition of quite a lot of oil — the pyre was finally induced to burn. I even recalled before it was too late that the eyes should be opened before the fire was lit. It was in the course of pulling back the sheet to see to this that I realised that the body was now clothed again, in what looked like a scarlet tunic such as Niveus wore.

I completed my ceremonial task and stepped back to Juno. ‘Somebody has dressed the body, then?’ I murmured, keeping my voice deliberately low. We were at a funeral, after all.

‘Stygius and I. And we put a quadrans in his mouth as well.’ He too was talking from the corner of his mouth. ‘All done at the suggestion of the priest of Jupiter. He said it was disrespectful to burn the body naked, when it is usual to deck a person in their best, so the steward brought out two or three old slave’s tunics from the house and we selected this. Marcus supplied new ones for all the household staff when Lucius came.’

I frowned. ‘But not for Niveus, surely? He wasn’t there by then. And this is a page’s uniform.’

Junio glanced warningly at Stygius and his men who were standing respectfully a little distance off, but all of them had their eyes fixed firmly on the ground, and facial expressions of careful piety. They seemed to suppose that all this muttering was some kind of muted prayer.

‘It must have belonged to Pulchrus, I suppose,’ he murmured. ‘It was by far the smartest tunic, though it was stained across the hem, and they’d taken all the trimming off. It seemed to fit all right. They were going to cut it up to use for cleaning rags, but it’s found a higher use. I don’t suppose that in the afterworld a stain will matter much.’ He gestured towards the pyre which by now was well alight. ‘Time to put the grave-goods on the flames, I think.’

I picked up the plaid shawl that had accompanied the corpse, and carefully tossed it into the centre of the fire, where it caught light and began to smoulder instantly. I stepped ceremonially back to Junio again. Even as I did so, an idea occurred to me.

‘Great Mithras! Pulchrus!’ I whispered. ‘I’d forgotten him. With those soft hands and everything, it might have been a page. You don’t suppose. .?’ I nodded at the pyre. ‘If he was supposed to be carrying a message to Londinium, no one would know he was missing anyway.’

Junio shook his head. ‘I suppose that’s possible — I should have thought of that myself. But I don’t see how it can be Pulchrus, Father. He was carrying that letter about arrangements for the trip and Marcus received an answer from Londinium this very afternoon, by the same messenger who brought the news of Marcus’s father’s death. And that was under the seal of the commander of the fleet — the classis Britannica. I saw him open it.’

‘So Marcus’s letter obviously reached Londinium, you mean? But that does not prove that it was Pulchrus who delivered it.’

Junio grinned. ‘But it seems as though it was. There was a hasty message from him attached to the reply, scratched on a piece of bark, saying that he and Hirsius — that’s Lucius’s chief slave — had left the wagons now and were riding on ahead, to make arrangements for the next stage of the trip. It’s a long way to Rome from where they’ll land in Gaul. And there’s no doubt that he sent it. He personally asked the messenger to bring it here, it seems — and from the description the fellow gave, it must have been Pulchrus — dashing, smart and vain. And anyway Marcus recognises the way he wrote the words.’

I nodded, grudgingly. If Marcus knew the writing, then that settled it. Pulchrus had been taught the rudiments, of course — most pages have to have a smattering of script — but I’d seen a rare note that he’d written once, myself, full of idiosyncratic spelling and peculiar letter-shapes. Quite unmistakable.

I sprinkled a little more wine and oil on the fire to help it burn. ‘So we are sure that Pulchrus reached Londinium all right?’ I was reluctant to abandon my neat theory here, but I was forced to admit that it was too convenient. Why would anyone kill a page if the message was going to be delivered anyway? I put the point to Junio. ‘No one had tampered with the letter on the way?’

‘It seems not, since the reply answered the request for information point by point. Apparently Marcus’s party is now going to stay with the fleet commander overnight — he has a fine villa just outside the town — because the governor’s palace is undergoing repair, new frescos and all that sort of thing, in preparation for the incoming governor. Anyway, the commander is a kind of relative — he is married to Lucius’s other cousin, it appears.’

‘A cousin of Marcus’s?’ I almost squeaked in my surprise.

He shook his head to warn me to speak more quietly. ‘Only by marriage, on Lucius’s mother’s side. Marcus lost touch with his aunt and her relations after Lucius’s father put his wife aside, and it seems he never met this half-cousin in his life — though of course he’d heard of her. He didn’t realise she’d been stationed with her husband in Londinium. But it turns out to be convenient, as these things often are. The husband will take them to Dubris in one of the finest ships in his command, and accompany them in another, larger one to Gaul. It was all in the letter — I heard Marcus reading it to Julia. She was quite relieved to hear that they were going to family.’

‘So that’s not the answer to the mystery,’ I said reluctantly. Indeed, when I considered all the facts, this corpse could hardly have been Pulchrus anyway. He’d left the villa accompanied by slaves with a whole cartload full of luggage — to say nothing of the entertainers who were travelling with them — and we had witnesses in Glevum who saw him pass the gates. He could hardly have been murdered without someone’s seeing it. However, it had given me an interesting idea. This was not the only household that used mounted messengers. If there was any other rumour of a missing page, or the answer to someone’s message had failed to arrive. .?

Junio nudged my arm. ‘Sandals?’

They were a pair of old ones, belonging to some slave. They had broken straps and mended soles and would not have fitted anyone bigger than a child, but I put them solemnly on the fire. A spirit should not reach the underworld without a pair of shoes, and presumably a ghost can modify its shape. Junio added some token wine and victuals to the blaze — to sustain the soul on its journey to the Styx — and that completed the ceremonial.

I raised my head and said in ringing tones — for the benefit of the audience as well as the gods — ‘With these grave-gifts we commend this unknown spirit to the underworld.’

‘Unknown indeed,’ my son said in my ear. ‘And now we may never find out who it was.’

I looked at the pyre. It was burning fiercely now and the body would soon be little more than ash. Whoever he was it would be hard to prove his identity now. Perhaps it did not matter. Marcus didn’t care, and at this stage it could make no difference to the murdered man. The mystery would have to remain a mystery. If the corpse had been a household page, he’d had a decent funeral; if a citizen we’d given him the minimum at least.

I called for a final blessing from the gods, pulled down the folds of toga which I’d been using as a hood, and took a step or two away from the cremation pyre. Stygius came bustling over with a large container full of wine.

‘You’ve finished, then?’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘We’ll let the fire burn down a bit, and then we’ll pour this over him. That will cool the ashes and we can get them put into the ground. The mistress has provided a pretty jug for them.’ He gestured to Caper, who was standing at his side. ‘One of the ones the servants use to drink their watered wine.’

Caper said nothing, but gave a goatish grin and held the jug aloft in hairy hands for me to see. When the conversation was in Latin, he wasn’t talkative.

I nodded. ‘Very good. So I can leave you to it?’ I would be glad to go inside. It was beginning to drizzle in earnest now. If it were not for the fire, which gave off a lot of heat, it would have been very chilly and miserable indeed. ‘I’ll tell my patron the cremation is complete. He wanted it finished as soon as possible. You need not worry about accompanying us back. Junio and I can find our way all right.’

Stygius shook his head. ‘The master wouldn’t like it. I’ll go with you myself. Caper can take over here till I get back again. It will take a little while for the fire to burn down, anyway.’

‘Won’t take too long to quench it, if this rain persists,’ I said, but Stygius appeared not to have heard. Instead he was already striding down across the field, and waiting for me and Junio to join him at the farm gate to the lane. He swung it wide ajar, and looked at me intently as I walked through it down the hill. ‘You won’t be wanting answers to your questions now?’

I shook my head. ‘Marcus has lost interest and wants the matter dropped.’

‘This young gentleman seemed to think you wouldn’t give up so easily. He said as much when we were doing that so-called burial. If I can help you, citizen, in any way. .’

‘I told you, Marcus wishes the matter laid to rest. In deference to his dead father, I believe.’

Junio gave me a sideways grin. ‘But I notice that you didn’t put the plaid dress on the pyre, although I know that Lucius proposed it. That suggests to me that you have not entirely lost interest in the case.’

I tried to look affronted. ‘The high priest agreed that it was not appropriate. It was almost certainly Morella’s garment, as I pointed out, and it should have died with her.’

Junio glanced at me. ‘You’ve discovered that the peasant girl was called Morella, then?’

I had forgotten that he did not know. I briefly outlined the happenings of the day. ‘So you see,’ I finished, ‘I couldn’t burn her garment with some unnamed man who’d been dressed up in it. That’s disrespectful to the souls of both of them. Assuming she is dead. I was only too happy to follow the high priest’s advice.’

‘Besides, you were reluctant to destroy a piece of evidence? And neither did you offer up the coins — although they are unlikely to have been a peasant girl’s. Because you still want to find out where she got them from?’

There was some truth in this, of course. Whatever Marcus’s instructions about the corpse might be, the question of Morella’s fate was still a mystery, and, whether she was alive or dead, I could not help feeling that it should be solved — although Gwellia would not like it if I went on with the investigation, especially when Marcus had told me I could stop. So, having no answer for Junio, I simply frowned at him.

We were walking side by side along a stony track by now, and neither of the others said anything at all. They were avoiding looking at me as they picked their way, although I noticed that they were exchanging glances now and then.

‘The body is destroyed, in any case,’ I said. ‘It would be impossible for anyone to identify it now.’

‘So the murderer has had his way about that after all — since you’re still convinced that’s why he battered in the face.’ Junio’s voice was sad.

‘And what about the shoulders?’ Stygius put in.

It was an invitation, and I fell into the trap. ‘I have been thinking about that, ever since I saw the body on the pyre. When I saw him in that slave’s tunic, it gave me an idea.’ I outlined my thoughts about the softness of the hands and the fact that a messenger might not be quickly missed, if he was carrying a missive between two distant points. ‘All right, it isn’t Pulchrus,’ I went on, ‘but it could still have been a servant from another house like this. If so there might well have been a slave brand on his back — and that wound would remove the identifying mark. And there was that narrow line round his neck as well — exactly as if a slave disc on a chain was used to throttle him. It would have been cut off afterwards, of course.’

Stygius thought a minute, and then said in his slow, stolid way, ‘A page? That would explain the well-developed legs: he’d get them from clinging to his horse and running about with messages.’ He walked ahead to undo a second gate and lead the way across another field. His stride was slow but it propelled him well on this uneven ground. We had to hurry to keep up with him. ‘But I’m surprised that no one has set up a hue and cry. A good pageboy is an expensive thing to lose.’

I was puffing, bouncing across hillocks and a little out of breath.

Even Junio was breathing hard. ‘His master might not even realise that he is missing yet. But if it was a messenger, what happened to the horse?’

‘We ought to be asking questions about that,’ I said, pausing at a rugged tree to lean and catch my breath. ‘Not just in local households, but perhaps at Glevum gates, in case the watch has heard of any missing page, or anyone unexpected has tried to sell a horse.’ I caught the glance that passed between the other two, and stopped. ‘Only, of course, the matter has been closed. So there is no point in our discussing this. Please drop the subject, and we’ll talk of something else.’

Junio gave me a knowing look. ‘You will not be interested in hearing what I learned in Glevum, then?’

‘And what was that?’

I saw my son exchange a glance with Stygius, and grin. ‘Not very much you didn’t learn yourself, in fact, though the gate guards recognised the description straight away. It was the hair that made her look conspicuous, of course. But they’ve seen her — Morella, is she called? — come to the market with her mother lots of times.’ He hesitated.

‘And?’

‘Then recently she turned up one day on her own and asked directions to the inn where the dancing troupe had rooms. The soldiers thought that it was comical, of course, and laughed at her. One of them suggested that she find Lucius’s chief slave — he was taking bribes, apparently, to have acts selected for the villa, to come and do their turns in the hope that they would be selected for the Emperor. That bears out what the dancing woman told us, doesn’t it? That the girl was willing to bribe someone for the chance of going to Rome. Only, of course, it was a waste of time. This fellow Hirsius didn’t have the authority to arrange it anyway. Only Lucius could possibly do that.’

‘And Morella?’

‘The guards didn’t think she had the money — it was just a silly jibe. But they told her where the dancing troupe were lodged, and off she went. Unfortunately no one paid particular attention after that, but someone recalled seeing her later in the marketplace, and another guard thought she might have gone out past him later on, but he wasn’t sure.’

‘Any use, citizen?’ That was Stygius.

I was affronted by this clear conspiracy with my adopted son. ‘How can it be useful, since the matter’s closed?’ I said, and trudged in disgruntled silence till we reached the house. ‘Junio and I must go in to take our leave. You have the funeral ashes to dispose of, I believe.’

‘As you say, citizen.’ And he went plodding off again towards the distant hillside and the still-rising smoke.