A Coin for the Ferryman

Chapter Nine

It was only then I realised that the two boys didn’t know about the corpse.

It had not occurred to me — but of course they were in Glevum when the discovery was made, and they had not spoken to anyone from the villa since. Kurso and I had not said anything to them when we arrived, and they had obviously been too busy with their knucklebones to listen at the door while I was telling the story to Gwellia and her maid. Even now they had only caught the very end of it and they were goggling with curiosity.

‘You want Cilla to question the villa servants?’ Maximus enquired, and Maximus added doubtfully, ‘Does that mean you want her to question us as well?’

I was about to say it didn’t, when it occurred to me it should. Of course these two might have some information of their own — perhaps without knowing that it was relevant. I looked at them sternly. ‘You don’t know anything about a body, I suppose? No rumours of a missing young man or peasant girl who might have been murdered a day or two ago?’

They glanced at each other in what looked like pure surprise, then — both together — raised their shoulders in a helpless shrug, spread their empty hands and pulled down the corners of their mouths like a pair of tragic masks. The effect, however, was quite comical. Marcus’s expensive dancers could not have moved in more perfect unison.

As usual the younger boy was the first to find his tongue. ‘I don’t believe so, master. The only bodies we saw today were the ones that they were taking to the paupers’ pit. .’

‘. . His Excellence sent us to move them off the road, when he and Lucius wanted to drive through with the gig, on their way to the basilica this morning,’ Maximus added.

‘You probably saw them for yourself,’ Minimus put in.

I nodded. I had indeed encountered the soldier with the mule and its grisly cargo — a pair of dead, broken bodies hanging upside down, their red hair dangling in the dust. Roman law did not permit the disposal of bodies within the city walls — not even those of beggars and common criminals — and these corpses were obviously on their way to be taken out and tipped without ceremony into the common pit.

‘A pair of Silurians, by the look of it,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t. The red hair and a smattering of Celtic now and then suggested that these two boys had Silurian blood themselves.

Minimus, however, seemed eager to assist. ‘I spoke to the mule-driver when I moved him on. A couple of brigands who’d been punished by the courts for robbery with violence on the Isca road.’

I nodded. The road which led from Glevum to the west was still dangerous — not only did the forests harbour wolves and bears, but the route was famous for the brigands who frequented it — some of them disaffected tribesmen from the borderlands, who had never quite accepted Roman rule and harried the supply trains and hapless travellers.

‘Six people robbed and murdered this last moon alone. Marcus was telling Lucius, just the other day. Then these two yesterday. .’ the young slave went on.

‘. . an old man and his daughter, from the sound of it. .’

‘. . stripped and robbed and cruelly stabbed to death. .’

‘. . some soldiers caught the robbers almost in the act, with gold and silver in their saddlebags, and the man’s possessions bundled in their packs.’

‘Even then they pleaded innocence, at first. .’

‘. . but the authorities beat a half-confession out of them. .’

They were so keen to tell me all this that I had to smile. ‘I heard there’d been a bit of trouble that way recently. But I don’t think Silurian rebels are much help to us. Our body was discovered a great deal nearer home.’ Then the implication struck me and I frowned. ‘Though that makes it more surprising, when you think of it. If our killer had simply left the body on the road, instead of carefully concealing it in a ditch on Marcus’s land, it would have been treated as a pauper, probably — somebody would have picked it up and thrown it in the pit, just like the bodies of the couple who were robbed — and there would have been no questions asked at all.’

‘The body was concealed on His Excellence’s land?’ Minimus sounded shocked.

Gwellia interrupted with a kind of mock reproof. ‘If you will finish helping your master to get dressed, and prevent him from shivering to death, perhaps he’ll tell you all about it from the beginning — with less damage to his health.’

The boys looked chagrined, and set to at once. I found myself telling the story as they worked.

They listened, horrified. Although they were very much Celts by birth, they were raised in Roman households and the whole idea of an unburied body at the Lemuria alarmed them terribly.

When I had finished Maximus turned to his fellow slave and said, ‘This happened about two days ago, so the master says. We were at the villa then — we didn’t leave all day. I didn’t notice anything unusual, did you?’ Concern had interrupted the usual duologue. Gwellia’s rebuke was not forgotten, though — he was making himself busy fetching garments as he spoke.

Minimus was already standing on the stool, slipping my clean tunic over my head and round my ears, so he sounded rather muffled as he replied. ‘We attended Marcus in the morning, didn’t we? Because Pulchrus had gone off to Londinium with the carts. And then there was that slave-trader who called in later on — the same one that Marcus always uses — bringing that useless, fair-headed little boy. Snowy, or whatever his name is.’ He smoothed the tunic round my neck and got down to tie the belt.

Maximus watched him critically, then gave the garment-hem a little tug so it hung evenly. ‘That’s right. I don’t know why the master ever bothered with the boy. We’d have done the job much better, if we’d had a chance. Not that I am sorry — I am happy to be here.’ He was waiting with my toga, and as he spoke he began to loop it deftly round me and fold it into place.

‘Why didn’t he ask you to attend him, then?’ I put in. Given the choice between Niveus and these two lively boys, I know which option I would have preferred.

Minimus pulled a face. ‘We aren’t sufficiently pretty for the purpose, I suppose. Marcus likes his pages to be glamorous. And didn’t Pulchrus know it? I often wondered if he chose his name himself.’

I nodded, with a grin. ‘Pulchrus’ means ‘the beautiful’. ‘I would not be surprised.’ I raised my arms to let the boys tuck in my toga-ends, which they did with practised skill.

Minimus gave me his cheerful, cheeky grin. ‘“Handsome as Adoneus”, Marcus used to say. You should have seen Pulchrus when he set off the other day. .’

‘That new scarlet tunic. .’

‘And that new fancy hat. .’

‘Just to impress them in Londinium!’

‘More to impress Lucius, if you ask me,’ Minimus observed. ‘Marcus had the sewing girls make new tunics for all the household staff, before his cousin came. And a whole new wardrobe for himself and Julia. .’

Maximus gave him a warning nudge. It was one thing to gossip about a page, quite another to discuss their former master in this way.

However, it was interesting to know. It explained my patron’s unusual generosity in providing Junio’s tunic and Cilla’s clothes tonight. As Gwellia had commented when we were in the town, Marcus was happy to be benevolent if the gift did not involve him in actual expense. Not that I was guilty of ingratitude. The tunics in question may have been passed on, but they were of a quality I could not afford and had been worn so little that they looked like new; while Junio’s toga must have been purpose-bought, since even Marcus’s discards bore that impressive purple stripe.

Cilla was chuckling. ‘Well, Pulchrus managed to impress them in Glevum anyway. I overheard one of the guards at the basilica today remarking that they saw him riding past the gate with Lucius’s hired driver and the wagon train. “Done up like a peacock, and twice as proud,” the fellow said.’ She did her imitation of the Rhineland voice. ‘“Too busy preening for the girls to even look at us.” Mind you, he was speaking to one of Lucius’s attendants at the time, and they are pretty vain themselves, it seems to me. Comes of being reared in the imperial city, I suppose.’

‘It’s the same up at the villa,’ Minimus agreed. ‘Won’t mix with any of the household staff — insist on having a special sleeping room. Especially that awful chief slave, Hirsius, with his swanky olive tunic and his sneering ways. Thank Mars he’s gone to Londinium with the luggage now. Pity that stupid bodyguard didn’t go as well. Great stuck-up bully — I don’t know why his master thinks so much of him. .’ He trailed off and looked anxiously at me, obviously fearing that he’d spoken out of turn.

‘Well, he’ll have to be questioned, if I do the job myself,’ I said. ‘No one who attended Lucius and Marcus in the basilica today could have heard the story of the corpse until they got back home. It is possible that one of them has something he could tell.’

Gwellia had been listening to all this with interest. ‘I think it’s more than possible. They are strangers to the district — and it seems the dead man is too, since there’s no one missing in the area. Perhaps he was coming to visit one of them.’

It was a good point. I turned to the boys. ‘Which reminds me of my question a little earlier. Apart from the slave-trader who brought Niveus — whom Marcus asked to come — there were no unexpected strangers at the villa on that day? No peasant women, or young men who might have walked across the farm, and evaded the attentions of the gatekeeper, perhaps?’

I sat down to allow Minimus to strap my sandals on. ‘Nothing like that, master,’ Maximus replied, and Minimus looked up to shake his head as well.

‘Nobody came in, except the banquet guests. And none of them went missing, or we would have heard.’

‘And no one at all for Lucius. He had a messenger soon after he arrived, bringing him a letter from his wife in Rome, but apart from that there has been no one wanting him at all.’

‘What happened to that messenger?’ I said without much hope. ‘You saw him leave again? It isn’t possible that he might be the corpse?’

Minimus grinned and shook his head. ‘Certainly not the one you describe. He was a big, strong fellow — you definitely wouldn’t take him for a girl — and armed with the biggest dagger that you ever saw. I suppose he had to be. Riding for miles and miles like that on unfrequented roads.’

‘And he didn’t have soft hands as a local page might have — they were like shovels and blistered with the reins,’ Maximus added.

‘Anyway, it couldn’t possibly be him.’ Minimus, as usual, had the most to say. ‘You said the corpse is fresh, but he’s been gone for days.’

Gwellia signalled to Cilla to stop working on her hair. She was looking thoughtful. ‘That poor girl. I wonder who she was, in any case?’

Cilla put down the bone comb she was using. ‘The girl who was killed by the Silures, do you mean?’

Gwellia shook her head. ‘I mean the poor creature whose dress was on the corpse.’

The maidservant looked baffled. ‘The peasant girl? But there wasn’t one. The clothes were only there as a disguise. Probably purchased by the killer, purposely.’

‘But don’t you see?’ I jumped up to my feet, suddenly understanding what had been obvious. ‘Your mistress is quite right. That dress belonged to someone, and it’s likely she is dead. No peasant would have parted with that garment willingly. Not with all that money hidden in the hem.’

There was a silence, and then Gwellia said, ‘I wonder if we’re wrong in assuming that the woman was young? Now I come to think of it, from the amount of money that you found in her skirts it seems more likely that she was of middle age. It takes a long time to accrue a fortune of that kind.’

Even as she spoke, I saw the force of what she was saying. My wife can surprise me with her perceptiveness. ‘Unless she was particularly young and beautiful and had a rich admirer who paid for her services?’

She shook her head. ‘In which case you’d expect her to have demanded finer clothes, not a greasy garment with worn sleeves and fraying hems.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t think you know much about young women of that kind.’

I didn’t. However, I did not wish to have my ignorance discussed before the slaves. ‘You are quite right, wife,’ I went on hastily. ‘There is really no proof of the woman’s age at all. All we know is that she was of middle height and slim.’

Gwellia nodded. ‘You think she was well nurtured then?’ It was a valid point. Many women, especially on the land, were skinny to the point of boniness: in a poor harvest peasants always starved, and the women often seemed to suffer most — perhaps because they gave what little food there was to their children or their husbands first.

I nodded. I thought about the dress, remembering the stitching at the waist, which had shown signs of tightness and of wear, as if it had been straining at the seams. ‘I think she had enough to eat,’ I said. ‘Whatever age she turns out to have been, it was not starvation which caused her death, I think.’

‘But you agree we are looking for another body?’ my wife said thoughtfully.

‘It rather looks like it.’

She came across the room, magnificent in her stola, and raked her fingers gently through my still-damp hair. ‘My husband, I could wish that you weren’t caught up in this. It is one thing to be asking questions at present, when your patron’s here — quite another when he’s gone to Rome. Who will there be to protect you then, if anything goes wrong?’

I shrugged, unwilling to admit that I had the same fears myself. ‘Then, wife, I shall have to make sure that nothing goes amiss. In any case, my patron wants this solved before they go away — before the Lemuria begins, in fact.’ Actually it was Julia who had said that to me, but it came to the same thing.

Gwellia was still looking doubtful. ‘That only makes it worse. You won’t have time to take things carefully. And from your description of what happened to the corpse, this killer will do anything to disguise his tracks. He must be merciless.’

I took her by the shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Gwellia. But if my patrons ask me, what else can I do?’

She shook herself away. ‘I know you’re right, of course. But I have a premonition. I don’t like this at all.’

‘You are just like Julia’s mother-in-law, in Rome.’ I tried to lighten the moment with a jest. ‘She’s famous for her premonitions.’ I told her about what Lucius had said.

She gave a rueful smile. ‘I’m not surprised that Julia doesn’t want to go to Rome, if Marcus’s family is all like Lucius. He looked so supercilious in the court today, I was relieved that Junio’s manumission went off without a hitch — I would not have put it past the man to decide the business was beneath him and spoil it in some way. Though perhaps I misjudge him. We have never really met.’

‘Well, it is time to go and meet him now,’ I said. ‘It will soon be getting dark, and they will be expecting us at the villa for the feast. It will take some time to get there — especially in new shoes. I can’t walk quickly in a toga at the best of times.’

Maximus and Minimus were by my side at once. ‘With your permission, master. .’

‘. . our former mistress, Julia, instructed us that when you were ready to come. .’

‘. . we were to run down to the villa and request the cart for you.’

‘Did she?’ I was very much surprised. ‘Marcus has never sent a cart for me before, unless I was ill, at any rate.’

Minimus gave that toothy grin of his. ‘She told him it would not impress his cousin if you came with dusty hems.’

I laughed aloud. ‘Very well then, go and fetch the cart.’

And half an hour later the three of us were on our way — not in a cart but in Marcus’s own gig, with Maximus and Minimus trotting at our side. We rode like patricians to the villa gates, where Aulus was waiting to scowl at me again and Niveus came out to show us shyly in.