A Pattern of Blood

Chapter Six

Sollers had rounded up for us all the slaves who were anywhere near Quintus’s reception room at the time of the murder. There were at least a dozen of them, and when I first glimpsed them, lined up outside the door of the study, my heart sank at how long the questioning was going to take. A closer inspection, however, made me simply goggle. If it were not for the ochre-tunicked figures of the secretary and the chief slave — who stood out from the others like two Vestal virgins at an orgy — I might have suspected that I had drunk too much watered wine and was seeing everything double. We brought the chief slave in to question him, and soon discovered why.

The poor man was half gibbering with fright lest the death of his master might be attributed to a slave’s negligence, which of course would ultimately be his personal responsibility. He was more impassioned than the forum orators in his desire to explain to us how no possible blame could attach to any servant under his control.

Ulpius, it seemed, not only possessed an enormous number of slaves, drawn from all over the Empire, but — whether to impress the populace or because he felt it befitted his position — generally deployed them in pairs, except for those with specialist functions like the secretary and the exquisite page I had seen earlier. Many of the ‘pairs’ were even matched as closely as possible for height and appearance — hence, presumably, the physical similarity of the two boys who had attended us on our arrival. This piece of conspicuous extravagance must have cost a fortune, and, apart from amusing Quintus, was evidently designed to dazzle visitors with an exhibition of wealth.

It had certainly dazzled Marcus: I shouldn’t be surprised to find matched pairs of serving lads at his own banquets in future. Quintus’s servants, though, were probably less enthusiastic about the arrangement. Slaves have little enough privacy in any household, but short of being manacled together, these poor creatures could scarcely have had less. The pairs ate together, worked together, washed together, waited together and even shared the same sleeping space in the slaves’ quarters. If I had been treated so when I was a slave, I should have found life ten times harder to bear, especially since a man could not even choose the companion who was linked to him with these invisible chains.

However, it did have one advantage now, from our point of view. The system meant that each half of a ‘pair’ had at least one witness to his movements for the entire day: indeed, I thought, with a little pang of sympathy, a witness to every minute of his life.

The chief slave confirmed this more strongly. There were so many slaves in the household, he explained, that each pair had specific duties, related to a particular person, function or ‘domain’, and most of the time were in full view of one or other of their fellow pairs. If they were not required, they were stationed in the slaves’ ante-room next to the kitchen, where he personally could keep an eye on them. Therefore, unless there was a conspiracy involving most of the household, we could eliminate any of the paired slaves at once.

Marcus was delighted when he saw the force of this. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘That will save a lot of time.’

It was a relief to me, too, though for different reasons. The chief slave was worried about his own safety, but strictly the law requires that if a master is killed by one of his slaves, the whole household should be put to death. The penalty is not often invoked these days, but in the case of someone as important as Quintus, Marcus might easily have felt that a firm example was needed.

Now, however, he was saying, ‘In that case, we hardly need to question them at all.’

That was no use, either. ‘You are quite right, Excellence,’ I said, before he could commit the indiscretion of letting them all go. ‘Under the circumstances, we need only question them a little. Naturally, you will wish to hear their stories, in case anything out of the ordinary occurred this morning, or one of them happened to see something significant.’

Marcus gave me a sharp look, but I met his eyes blandly, and in the end he smiled. ‘Naturally,’ he agreed. ‘We’ll have them in — in pairs.’

In fact, there was not a great deal to be learned. Whatever the slaves had been doing that morning — fetching and carrying, sweeping and cleaning, bringing chairs and serving food, filling lamps and trimming wicks, running errands, dancing attendance or simply waiting interminable hours for someone to call upon them — they had done it in full view of someone else. Until Quintus’s death, there had been nothing unusual about the day’s routines, apart from the additional tasks occasioned by our own arrival.

Even the pair who had actually been attending Quintus had very little information to offer. It was their duty, they said, to sit outside the door while Ulpius was receiving clientes and await a summons. They very rarely went into the room while business matters were discussed, unless their master called them in specially. From time to time they were called to take messages or plump up cushions, or to fetch wine, or ink and the delicate rolls of thin tree bark which he used for official documents instead of his usual wax tablet and stylus. Mostly, they just waited.

‘At which door?’ I wanted to know.

It varied, they said. Usually it was the rear door, into the central courtyard, but for the last day or two Quintus had seemed uneasy about something and had insisted that they wait in the ante-room, where they were closer at hand while he received his clientes.

Marcus was instantly all attention. ‘So, Quintus did fear something?’ he suggested. ‘One of his clientes, perhaps?’ He sounded grim, and I realised he was thinking again about the possible connection with Pertinax.

The slaves exchanged uncomfortable glances.

‘Well?’ Marcus demanded.

There was a pause, and then one of the slaves spoke up. ‘I suppose he must have done, Excellence,’ he said, doubtfully. ‘Sollers thought so. He had the visitors give up their knives and leave them in full view. We. . we were proved wrong, but we thought it was ridiculous. Many of the visitors came here every day. We knew most of them well — and even the citizens Flavius and Lupus are hardly strangers, at least by reputation. They are illustrious men, their names are well known to everyone in Corinium.’

‘And how did they behave today?’ Marcus wanted to know. ‘Did they seem secretive? As if they were planning something?’

Again that awkward pause. ‘Impatient, perhaps, at being made to wait,’ one of the slaves said at last. ‘They spoke very graciously to us.’

Meaning that they were generous with their tips, I thought. I said, ‘Did your master have some unexpected problem that you know of? Difficulty with his affairs? Something which troubled him suddenly?’ That was a leading question. Slaves, listening unregarded in a corner, often know their owner’s secret business better than he thinks.

One of the slaves shook his head. ‘I do not think so, citizen. If he was anxious, it was only because he had been set on in the street. Of course, I could be wrong. We slaves would hardly know his affairs. Naturally, we didn’t listen to what he said to his visitors, and in any case, he kept the discussions general when we were there. If he wanted to talk in private he sent us away.’

So Quintus suspected that you listened, I thought, suppressing a smile, and obviously he was right. Otherwise how did you know what he was discussing? Aloud I said, ‘So he did not seem especially anxious today?’

The slave smiled. ‘No. Twice he sent us off on unnecessary errands. His secretary could tell you more about that — he was usually there if Quintus was discussing business. Though there were times when the master sent everyone away. When Maximilian came, for instance.’

‘Yes,’ his companion added, ‘and again when Julia visited him, and when Sollers came to bleed him earlier. That was not unusual. Our master was always. . private, in that way.’

I nodded. Men who have been accustomed from birth to a houseful of slaves simply ignore their presence, treating them as no more than pieces of furniture, and conducting all their affairs — even the amorous ones — as though the watching slave had no more eyes and tongue than a table. Marcus did so himself. Quintus, coming to high position at a later age, clearly preferred more discretion in his private life. All the same, I thought, if a man is frightened for his safety, he does not surround himself with servants and then dismiss them at critical moments.

‘So where were you,’ Marcus asked, ‘when Quintus was attacked?’

‘We were in the slaves’ room, next to the kitchen, waiting to be summoned back. The chief slave can vouch for that. We were attending our master when Maximilian came in from the front courtyard, stormed past Sollers and ordered us out of the back door. We were to get out till we were sent for, he said, and not to loiter listening in the courtyard.’

‘You took orders from Maximilian?’ Marcus sounded surprised.

The young man answered with surprising dignity. ‘Excellence, we are slaves. We do as we are told. Maximilian is the son of the house and our master did not countermand the order. On the contrary, he dismissed the secretary himself. So we went. The next thing we knew, there was Sollers coming to find us, telling us that Quintus Ulpius was dead, and we were to go out straight away and buy oils for the anointers.’

‘If you were in your waiting room,’ I said slowly, ‘how could you know when Quintus wanted you?’

‘He kept a great bronze bowl on the table by his couch,’ the lad replied. ‘When he wanted us, he struck it with his cane.’ He smiled. ‘The sound could be heard anywhere in the building.’

Marcus intervened sharply. ‘And the secretary? Did he go to the slaves’ room too?’

‘No. My master sent him somewhere with work to do — I think to this very room — to write some letter on a cliente’s account, but I could not swear to it.’

Marcus scowled and turned to the other slave, who trembled at the magisterial attention but could offer nothing to the purpose. ‘I regret it deeply, Excellence, but I did not pay attention. Both my master and his son were in a terrible temper, and to tell the truth we were glad to get into the kitchen, and out of shouting range.’

The boy was right to be alarmed. Marcus was beginning to tap his baton against his hand, a sure sign that he was growing impatient. My patron is sometimes inclined to the good old Roman theory that a sound flogging is beneficial to the memory, and I feared he was about to put the theory to the test again.

I murmured swiftly, ‘I am sure, Excellence, that the secretary can tell us that himself. We have learned a good deal already. Perhaps we should now speak to the slaves who discovered the body?’

‘Very well. But I shall come to you again,’ Marcus said, turning to the boy and terrifying him still further. ‘For the moment, you may go.’

But the slaves who found the body seemed to have little of consequence to add. They were the two who had first attended us. They had gone, as Maximilian had instructed, to look for Julia and tell her that Quintus wanted her. They had looked for her: first in her quarters, then, with increasing agitation, in the garden, until it had occurred to one of them that, since she had left us with the intention of seeking an audience for us with her husband, perhaps she had gone to him already. ‘We went to our master’s room,’ the spokesman said. ‘The door was shut and there were no slaves on duty. We didn’t like to go in — a lack of attendants usually meant that Ulpius wished to be private. But then we heard a noise, a kind of groan, and when we pushed open the door there was Quintus crawling towards us with a dagger in his back. He was moaning for Sollers, but we couldn’t find him either, so we came back to you — and the rest you know.’

I asked sharp questions about the time they had spent looking for Julia. Various people could verify that — Julia’s handmaidens, for example, whom they met coming out of her rooms with a pile of garments, and a garden slave who was picking herbs for the kitchen. And they had spoken to the secretary when they looked into the study.

We had him in next. I recognised him at once as the disdainful servant who had looked at me so scornfully in the garden. Now, for the first time, I heard him speak, and I understood something of his arrogance. This was no ordinary slave. He spoke almost perfect Latin, and his vocabulary indicated a certain range of learning. I was fascinated, and longed to hear more about him, but for the moment he was answering Marcus’s questions.

He could indeed corroborate the slaves’ story and the testimony of Quintus’s attendants. Maximilian had come, and demanded a private audience with his father — all the servants had been dismissed, the slaves to the waiting room, and himself to the study where he had been instructed to write a letter. He had remained there until I had seen him myself, crossing the courtyard after the murder.

It was a simple testimony, supported at all points, and Marcus would have dismissed him then and there, but the man interested me. He had an aloof, almost disdainful air, and although he was suitably deferential when speaking to Marcus, there was no mistaking the condescension behind the careful courtesy with which he answered my questions. Mutuus the scribe, for so he styled himself, was an unusual sort of household clerk.

‘Who exactly are you?’ I said, on an impulse.

‘Citizen?’ He sounded surprised, as well he might. Even Marcus was looking startled. It is not the kind of question one normally asks a slave.

‘Have you been with your master long?’ I persisted, and saw Marcus relax. That kind of questioning he could understand. If Mutuus had worked at one time for an enemy of Pertinax, he might well be a paid informant. Every important household had its share of spies. You could almost see Marcus working it out.

‘For Ulpius? A little less than a year. I came to him last Janus Feast.’

I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t, and I had to prompt him. ‘And before that?’

‘Before that I was in another household. Here, in Corinium.’

He was telling us nothing. Marcus tapped his baton impatiently. ‘Which household?’ he demanded.

There was a perceptible pause. The answer, when it came, astonished me. ‘The household of Paulus Avidius Lupus.’

‘Great Mercury! Of Lupus! The old man who came here this morning? There was a conspiracy, I knew it. Why did he come here, slave? Why did he send you here to spy?’

Mutuus raised his head defiantly. ‘I am no slave. I am simply a bondsman to Quintus, or was while he lived.’

I glanced at Marcus. That was no idle distinction. A man in civil bondage is not a mere living chattel, like a horse or a slave, to be disposed of or used at will. His labour, not his person, belongs to his master. And, as the young man suggested, bondage is often to a named individual. Such a bondsman is free on his master’s death.

‘Mancipium?’ I said, giving civil bondage its legal name, and mentally rehearsing the possible reasons why a man might find himself subjected to it. Debtors, gladiators, estate workers and ransomed prisoners of war were the usual categories. Mutuus did not seem to fit any of these. Perhaps he was one of those rare clientes — a poor free man, who had pleaded the ancient customs of republican Rome and thrown himself entirely on the mercy of his patron, binding himself in the process. But in that case, how had he come from Lupus’s household? There was one way to find out. I asked him.

He looked at me with new respect. ‘I am a distant kinsman of Lupus. My father, too, had money once, and gave me an education before he died and left me his debts. I repudiated the estate. I became a free-man scribe, and won a little reputation in the market place for the writing of letters and rendering accounts. Then Lupus heard of it. He needed a secretary. He took me into his household, and offered to adopt me as his heir, in return for my skills. I considered the offer for some months, but finally I acquiesced.’

I understood that. A good secretary is a rare prize, and Lupus must have been delighted with his bargain. Mutuus, for his part, would inherit the estate in a few years. What puzzled me was something else. ‘He hated Quintus. Why did he send you here?’

Mutuus almost smiled. ‘He did not send me here. Quintus demanded me, as legal recompense. He claimed I killed his servant in a street brawl.’

I hardly dared to breathe. ‘You attacked him in the street?’

‘And stabbed him? No. This was a year ago. I have wondered since whether Ulpius himself arranged it. Lupus had just adopted me formally; he had no direct heirs of his own, and we had to go before the magistrates to legalise the succession. We had just done so when Ulpius went by with his retinue. Naturally he had heard about it. He has long sought to destroy our family, as you may have heard, over an ancient grudge, and when he learned that Lupus now had a formal heir he was furious. I think he hoped there would be no clear line of inheritance, and then there would have been a hearing before the local curia and most of the estate would have ended up in the imperial coffers. No doubt Quintus, as a senior magistrate, would have got his share. There was a struggle.’

‘Quintus attacked you?’ Marcus was incredulous.

‘No. That would have been beneath his dignity. But his servants began hurling insults and then stones, and a scuffle broke out. One bumptious young scoundrel jeered threateningly at me, and I stepped forward and knocked him down. I did not mean to kill him, but according to Quintus, he died an hour later. I was taken before the tribunal. Lupus would have paid compensation, but Ulpius claimed that the slave was Greek and highly educated, and put such a high price upon him and his services that Lupus simply could not afford to pay. He was obliged to give me in noxal surrender, in recompense for the “debt” I owed. Ulpius made me his secretary and forced me to write his letters and witness his accounts. A compliment to my learning, he insisted, but in fact it was a way of parading me before his business cronies and humiliating Lupus.’

‘But he trusted you with his affairs?’ I was surprised. In Quintus’s position, I would have done nothing of the kind.

Mutuus shook his head. ‘Having got me, he trusted me with nothing important. He made it clear that he doubted my honour. He checked every word I wrote, and sent me away if there was anything really important to discuss. It was foolish really, he could have afforded any secretary he chose — but he could not bear that Lupus had a finer one. I think that is why he insisted on the noxal surrender.’

‘Noxal surrender!’ Marcus said. ‘Legal surrender into bondage in compensation for a wrong. I knew it was legally enforceable, of course, but it is years since I heard of the penalty being exacted. Noxal surrender of a slave, yes, or a horse. That’s common enough. But never of a son. Even an adopted one.’

‘If one has enough wealth,’ Mutuus said, ‘all sorts of ancient laws can be invoked. Especially if one is a senior officer of the curia. And it amused Ulpius to have me here.’

‘Just as it amused him to give you your bond name?’ I suggested. ‘Mutuus, the borrowed one.’ From what I was learning of Quintus, he would have found that humorous.

‘Exactly,’ Mutuus agreed. ‘Although, of course, I am his bondsman no longer. His death releases me. Lupus will have his desire.’

‘That is what he came for? To ask for your release?’

‘Or to bargain for it, I think. I cannot be sure. Ulpius did not permit written communication between us. In any case, Lupus did not write well. That is why he needed a secretary.’

‘Because of his stiff hand?’ I asked.

Mutuus shook his head. ‘I saw, today, that he was favouring his hand. He did not have a problem that I knew of. I only know that he could not write well — nor read for that matter — beyond carved capitals on inscriptions. He could read those. He took me out of town, more than once, to read me the inscriptions on the roadside tombs. I think he was proud of his achievement.’

‘But you did not see your adoptive father this morning?’

‘I saw him arrive, of course. He was in the ante-room with the other supplicants. I did not speak to him alone.’

‘Nor see him do anything suspicious?’

Mutuus smiled wryly. ‘Citizen, I was sent to this room. The door was closed and so were the windows. How could I see anything from here? There is glass in the windows.’

I saw Marcus glance at the windows. They were glazed, as Mutuus said, in the latest fashion, with little panes of expensive Roman glass — bluey-green in colour and wonderful for letting in light and keeping out draughts, but impossible to see through. He nodded in understanding.

‘I see. Thank you, citizen, you have been most helpful.’

The significance of the title was not lost on Mutuus. For the first time since he had entered the room there was a genuine smile on his lips. ‘Thank you, Excellence. Please let me know if I can be of further help.’ He bowed deeply and left the room.

‘Well,’ Marcus said, as soon as he had gone. ‘That simplifies matters, doesn’t it? Ten denarii to an as it was Lupus who did it. I thought so when I met him. I’ve never seen a man look more guilty, but I could not see a motive. Now I understand. Wanted Mutuus back, and chose the quickest route to free him. And he’s hated Quintus for years. What do you think, Libertus?’

I was thinking about a number of things, not least the fact that Mutuus had avoided answering my question about speaking to his father.

‘I think,’ I replied carefully, ‘that I should like to take another look around the garden, before it gets too dark to see.’