A Coin for the Ferryman

Chapter Three

I was not really hopeful of discovering very much as my new son and I followed the blond pageboy from the house and through the inner court. If this girl was dressed in someone else’s clothes, I thought, they could have been obtained from anywhere, so there was probably little to be deduced from them. As for establishing exactly who she was, we would probably have to wait until someone came forward to claim the corpse as some missing member of their family, since the face was said to be unrecognisable. However, I was interested to see those hands and feet.

‘There, citizens.’ The pageboy indicated the outbuilding where the body had been put. He was clearly unwilling to go near the place himself, so I took pity on his youthful sensibility and Junio and I walked forward on our own.

The door was already ajar as we approached, and the swarthy figure of Marcus’s chief land slave could be seen inside, standing guard beside a sheeted bundle on a plank. I knew the fellow slightly. His name was Stygius: a big man, strong and powerful from long years in the field, with muscles and sinews that stood out like knotted ropes, and speech as slow and deliberate as his walk.

He came out to greet me with a worried frown. ‘Citizen Libertus, I am glad you’re here. The mistress told me you were on your way. And you too, citizen, of course.’ He nodded in Junio’s direction with a vague, respectful air, twisting his fingers together in front of his leather apron and bowing to us both. ‘The mistress told you what I noticed about the skin and nails?’ He avoided looking us directly in the face. Life had taught him to be subservient.

‘She did indeed, Stygius,’ I said. ‘And I was impressed. It was very intelligent of you to notice it. Many people would not have spotted the significance of that.’

His face was browned with sun and wind, but I would almost swear he blushed. ‘It’s kind of you to say so, citizen,’ he said and stared down at his hands.

I realised that it was probably not often that anyone commended Stygius for his intelligence — it is not something expected of a land slave on the whole. Strong arms, a strong back and an unwavering application to the task in hand, however dreary and repetitive, were the important attributes, even for a chief man like Stygius. I felt a sudden surge of sympathy for him, labouring in the fields from dawn to dusk, at the mercy of all extremes of sun and rain: he was slow of speech and movement, but it was clear his mind was sharp. ‘You did very well,’ I added, and he flashed me a shy smile.

My praise had given him more self-assurance, it appeared. ‘If it was just a peasant I would have left her lying here,’ he said, raising his head to look at me, and lumbering into confidential mode. ‘But I thought that, with it being a wealthy girl perhaps, there should be someone with her in case the parents came. Give her a bit of dignity, at least, by standing guard over her instead of abandoning the body like an empty sack. The mistress did not send a household slave to keep vigil here, so I thought I had better do the job myself. I’ve left my deputy in charge out in the fields.’

He was half apologetic, and I understood. Had I been Stygius, I too would have found it more attractive to be here — keeping guard over a quiet body in a warm dry shed — than bending over the spade and hoe till darkness fell and urging labour out of other weary men. ‘I’m sure your intentions were sincere,’ I said, and followed, with Junio, as he led the way inside.

‘There you are!’ He pulled the door half closed behind us as he spoke, as if to exclude other prying eyes and afford the corpse a little privacy. The room was heavy with the smell of death.

The lack of window-spaces made the place quite dark, even though it was scarcely past midday, and it took me a moment to become accustomed to the gloom. When I did, I knew what I should see — I had been there once or twice before. It was a longish, narrow room, with stone walls and a floor of trodden earth. Sometimes there were boxes of funeral herbs about, but today it was empty except for the makeshift bier on which the body lay, covered with a piece of unbleached linen cloth. A pair of candles burned at head and foot, each supported by an iron spike, and these threw eerie shadows on the shrouded form.

‘You have prepared the body for burial?’ I asked. I imagined that the body had been washed and oiled, and sprinkled with the herbs.

Stygius shook his head. ‘The mistress thought that we should leave her for the family to do that — supposing that we find out who they are. My only instructions were to bring the body over here and make it look as decent as I could, so that’s what I’ve tried to do. The face was so awful that I couldn’t look at it, so after I’d got rid of all the ants and things I just brushed the leaves and dust off the clothing to clean it up a bit, and covered her all up with a piece of cloth I found.’

Junio had been standing patiently at my side through this exchange, but now he stepped forward and asked quietly, ‘You cleaned the clothing up a bit, you say? But weren’t there bloodstains on it, Stygius? Surely, compared to that a bit of dust would hardly signify?’

Stygius peered at him a moment, and then burst out with a laugh. ‘Why — it’s Master Junio, by all the gods! I knew that they were going to set you free today, but I’d never have known you in that fancy garb — saving your presence, citizen, of course.’

‘Junio is wearing garments which befit his rank,’ I said, and then — feeling that the rebuke had been severe — ‘More than this dead girl is doing, it appears. You have sharp eyes, Stygius. Answer his question: were there bloodstains on the clothes?’

Stygius thought a minute, puzzled, and at last he shook his head. ‘It’s a strange thing, Master Junio, now you come to mention it,’ he said, ‘but I don’t believe there were. A smear or two round the neck, no more. And you would have expected, with her poor face in that appalling state. . But, here, you’d better see for yourselves.’ He approached the bed, and with a single gesture stripped the cloth back from the shrouded form.

It was indeed a most appalling sight. The face was nothing but a bloody pulp, battered into formlessness. Nose, chin and cheekbones were all in fragments now and there was so little undamaged skin that the whole face looked as though it had been flayed — though doubtless rats and beetles had played their part in that. If the girl’s parents did arrive to claim her, I thought, the poor souls would find few features that they could recognise. But one thing was quite certain: this was no accident.

I had still been toying with that possibility, wondering if the girl had really run away — as I had suggested to Julia earlier — and somehow managed to lose her way and plunge down from a height, killing herself and leaving her stricken lover to hide her corpse somehow. But seeing the evidence, I knew there was no chance of that. Someone had wielded a heavy item, with enormous force.

I drew a little nearer to the corpse and looked more closely. Slight, with a boyish figure and of less than average height, the pathetic victim had clearly not been very old, and the garment she was wearing was too generous for her. Made of coarse woollen fabric in the Celtic style, it was very far from new, heavy and shining in places with years of unwashed grime. The broad plaid was roughly fashioned into a sort of gown, the hems ragged with use and the long sleeves patched and mended at the ends. It was tied in at the waist with a piece of battered rag, and a frayed shawl in a different plaid was tied round the head, so that no hair emerged, making a grotesque frame for that poor damaged face.

But as Stygius said, there was very little blood. Even in this dim light it was possible to see that. No spreading telltale stain of darkness on the dirt-encrusted chest, no brittleness of dried blood even on the scarf. A tiny smear upon the shoulder, when I looked carefully, and another on the shawl. Almost as if. .

‘She wasn’t wearing those clothes at the time she was attacked.’ That was Junio, echoing my thoughts as usual. ‘Someone must have dressed her in them after she was dead.’

I nodded. ‘I’m almost sure of it.’ I picked up one of the candles — forgetting the vengeful spirits for a moment — and brought it close to get a better light. ‘And what’s even more peculiar, the smears — such as they are — seem to be on the outside of the dress.’ I lifted back the tattered material to show him as I spoke. The neckline was grimed to grey with mingled dirt and sweat, in contrast to the smooth and flawless skin it circled, but there was no evidence of bloodstains anywhere.

My action had exposed the shawl-ends which were tied about the throat, and it occurred to me that we should remove it and see what was beneath. Even without the features, we could learn something from the hair — if it was sculpted in a Roman style, it might be helpful in identifying the girl by and by. Rather gingerly I undid the knots and let the plaid cloth fall back on the bier.

The effect was startling. ‘Great Minerva!’ Junio stared at me. ‘Someone has hacked her hair off at the roots.’

It was true. The hair had been cut off in savage, random clumps close to the scalp, so that only a few haphazard strands remained. ‘And look, there is no blood across the scalp, and nothing on the inside of the shawl. You see what that implies?’ I glanced at Junio and he raised his brows at me. I knew we understood each other perfectly.

He gave a whistle of amazement, then turned to Stygius. ‘Have you examined her at all? Is there any indication how she died?’

The land slave goggled at us. ‘But. . surely, citizen? The face. .? Nobody could survive that sort of attack.’

‘We think it’s possible that the damage was inflicted after death,’ I said. ‘That would explain why there’s so little blood. If she had been alive there would be bloodstains everywhere.’

Junio nodded eagerly. ‘And you would expect the smears to be on the inside of the clothes if somebody had killed her, smashed her face, and then put her in these garments afterwards.’

‘And there’s your proof.’ I pointed to the neck. There was a thin purple-red line around it — not where the shawl had been, though that had left a white mark in the flesh, but higher up — as if a cord had been passed round and then drawn tight. ‘It looks like a strangulation. Almost a garrotte.’ We might have seen evidence, if the face was there — the change of colour and the protruding tongue — but all trace of that had vanished, together with the features. ‘So it looks as if he killed her first, then dressed her up like this — and then inflicted the damage afterwards.’ It was a dreadful image, and I shuddered at the thought.

‘But. .?’ Junio began.

I answered the question before he’d uttered it. ‘To disguise her identity, I suppose. Perhaps the simple change of clothes did not prove to be enough. It must be something of the kind. Why else would anyone do a thing like that?’

‘Great Ceres! I suppose it’s possible.’ Stygius furrowed his tanned face in a frown. He paused a minute and then spat thoughtfully. ‘Somebody was really anxious to do that, wasn’t he? Putting her in clothes that weren’t her own, chopping off her hair and mashing up her face as if it was a turnip — then going to the trouble of putting her in a ditch and piling leaves on her. And in part of the forest that was off the beaten track — on private property. He can’t have imagined that she’d be found so soon. Even we land slaves never usually go there.’

It was my turn to frown. This was an aspect of the affair which had not occurred to me.

Stygius saw that he had made a point, and went on in his slow unhurried way, ‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it, citizen? If the mistress hadn’t told us to clear that piece of ground, to make way for a roundhouse for this young gentleman, that body would have been there years and years. Nobody would ever have had cause to go in there — it’s not even a place where poor people go to pick up kindling. There were a few old trees — which we’ve cut down now, of course — but it was mostly dense undergrowth and nasty prickly things.’

I held the candle higher and looked hard at him. ‘But someone must have forced a way in, mustn’t they, to hide the body there?’

He seemed to take a moment to acknowledge this. ‘I suppose they must have, when you think of it. Unless they used the tracks that we had made ourselves. We took the taller timber down a half a moon ago, and carted it out on sledges, so we made a sort of path.’

‘And didn’t you say the body was hidden in a ditch?’ That was Junio. He was looking at the body with horror, but was taking a lively interest in all this, as well he might. It was his roundhouse that was threatened by the Lemures, after all.

Stygius gave his slow nod. ‘The body had been pushed down into it, and covered with a great pile of fallen branches and dead leaves. It would have been nothing but a bag of bones, you’d think, before anybody found it in the normal way — and it couldn’t have been identified by that time anyway.’

Junio turned to me. ‘What do you think, mast- Father? It does sound as if whoever put this body there was very anxious not to risk its being found. Yet it can’t have been entirely safe hiding a body in the forest anyway. The area is right next to your roundhouse and the lane, so somebody could easily have seen them doing it. Kurso, for instance, when he was dealing with the animals; or anybody passing on the road. The ditch was hidden, but the access can’t have been — they could hardly have come through from the villa side. They would have had to be on Marcus’s private land for that.’

I shook my head. It was a mystery to me. Why take such trouble to obliterate the face and chop off all the hair when the body was to be hidden in a place where no one was likely to find it — as Stygius said — for years and years? When it was covered with large branches in that way, not even wild animals could dig it up — until all chance of identifying it was long gone, anyway. There must be something that I was missing here.

‘Take this, Junio.’ He was standing next to me, and almost without thinking I handed him the light, and bent to look more closely at the corpse. A quick inspection of the hands persuaded me that Stygius was right. They were far too clean and pumiced for a peasant girl and they showed no signs of heavy work at all — though they were by no means dainty. In fact, they were rather large and angular, and there was a bruise-mark on one finger where a ring might once have been — a tight one, pulled off forcibly, by the look of it.

It was rather a similar matter with the feet and ankles too. It was clear that the owner of that soft, clean, supple skin did not go barefoot as a general rule. The toes and soles were virtually unmarked by calluses, which suggested that they were usually encased in proper shoes or sandals (and probably expensive ones at that) rather than the makeshift boots of rags, or fresh hide bound around the feet and left to cure, which peasant women usually wear.

Yet these were not the dainty, aristocratic feet of which ladies like Julia were so justly proud — they were not as big as Junio’s or mine, but even my slave Cilla had smaller ones, and her ankles were less raw-boned and prominent. These legs were pale and muscular, and smooth as kidskin — as if they had been painfully pumiced, shaved or plucked.

‘Is there any other damage?’ Junio was bending to get a closer look.

‘We shall soon see,’ I said. I untied the waistband, and to Stygius’s obvious dismay, motioned him to help me to take off the garment so that I could see the body underneath. As I lifted up the hem-front, my fingers felt something hard hidden in the cloth. Something round and solid, like a largish coin.

‘Bring that light a little closer, Junio,’ I said, running my fingers further round the hem. And indeed, right by the clumsy side seam of the skirt, there was a spot where the stitching was undone, leaving a small opening to the space beneath and allowing the owner to use it as a kind of makeshift purse. I slipped my fingers down into the hole and with the other hand I worked the object round till I could take it out.

‘What is it, Father?’ Junio was watching me.

‘A coin!’ I produced it with a flourish.

He laughed. ‘For the ferryman, perhaps?’

This was only half intended as a jest. It is the custom, at Roman funerals, to slip a coin into the mouth of the deceased as payment for Charon, the boatman who is supposed to take the spirit across the Lethean stream — the River Styx, the Greeks would call it. If this girl was high-born, some such coin must be found, though a Celtic peasant woman would not have needed such a thing.

But this was no copper coin. Not even a silver denarius — a large coin for a pauper — as I’d expected it would be, hidden in the hemming as a precaution against thieves. This was a piece of solid gold. An aureus — so rare I had seen only a handful in my whole career. And, as my fingers worked along the hem, I found another coin, and a third and a fourth.

I pulled them out and held them up one by one in the candlelight. They were all different — provincial, foreign or tribal coins perhaps — and though they were all quite clearly made of gold, only the aureus was a standard Roman coin, and bore the image of a proper emperor. And that — perhaps — was the strangest thing of all, for the head was unmistakably that of ‘Little Boots’, or ‘Caligula’ as the Romans say.

I found myself staring in amazement at the coin. All coinage that bore the head of Little Boots had been officially withdrawn after his assassination and reminted with the face of his successor, Claudius. It was illegal coinage, rare and potentially quite dangerous to own — though still, quite literally, worth its weight in gold. I explained the circumstances to the other two.

Stygius frowned and Junio commented, ‘That’s very peculiar, master, isn’t it? Why bury her in a garment which had a fortune in the hem?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand it. Perhaps the killer didn’t know. There is something very peculiar about this crime. Let’s take the garment off her, Stygius.’

It was no easy matter, but we half sat the body up and gently eased the gown away from it.

‘She cannot have been very old,’ I said. ‘Her chest is as smooth and formless as a child’s. And the mystery isn’t over.’ I had glimpsed the back. ‘Have a look at this!’

There was what looked like a stab wound on the shoulder area, as if a whole lump of flesh had been removed. Yet there was no sign of the copious bleeding which such treatment would be expected to produce: only a tiny runnel of dried blood on either side. Another injury inflicted after death? And if so, to what purpose? I laid the body down.

There was a modesty-binding wrapped around between the legs, and almost without thinking I released the piece of cloth to see if there were more wounds in the lower area.

Junio whistled for a second time, and even Stygius let out a startled cry.

‘Great Ceres! You were right about this being peculiar, citizen!’ What we were looking at was unquestionably male.