A Roman Ransom

Chapter Twenty-five

Not nearly as much as I longed to talk to her! Relief and gladness knocked the strength from me. I was every bit as weary as Junio thought I was, and it was beyond my capabilities to run, but I did my very best. I hurried through the house and out into the court at an undignified hobble, and did not pause until I reached the doorway of my room.

‘Gwellia!’

She was waiting for me, looking as beautiful as it is possible for a lady of almost fifty years to look when she is scowling in obvious concern. It was not possible to sweep her up into my arms, as I would have liked to do — there were servants present, and we were guests in Marcus’s house — but I crossed the room and seized her by the hands. ‘Gwellia!’ I said again. ‘I have been so worried about you.’

‘Me?’ She squeezed my fingers and released herself. Her eyes were fringed with tears. ‘It’s you that we should be concerned about. Look at you! Out in the courtyard in the rain, without a covering — and after you have been so ill, as well. You’ll catch a chill on top of everything, and I’ll have to nurse you all over again.’ She patted the pillows and the bed. ‘Come on, lie down. I know you, husband. You’re in need of it.’

I was. I was suddenly overwhelmed with love and weariness. I did as she commanded and reclined, while my servants took off my sandals and pulled the covers over me.

Gwellia was still scolding — I knew it was her way of showing how much she cared for me. ‘And what have you been up to while I have been in town? Up to your investigative tricks, I understand? I’m surprised that Marcus has permitted it. Obviously you’re very far from well. And it is more than your health that you have put at risk. I hear that doctor has brought a charge against you, and Marcus has you more or less under arrest.’

I heaved a happy sigh. ‘But that’s all over now. Without an accuser there can be no case. And I don’t think he’ll be back. You know what happened here?’ I began to offer an explanation, but she interrupted me.

‘Cilla and Junio have told me everything. Of course Kurso and I already knew that something was amiss. We looked in at the roundhouse on our way here, so that he could see to the animals and pick up any eggs — but we found a soldier standing guard beside the gate. He actually refused to let us go inside.’

I thought privately that perhaps it was as well, since the house would certainly have been ransacked in the search, but I knew how upset Gwellia would have been to come home unexpectedly to that. ‘It was because they found the ransom bag. .’

‘Of course, husband, I know that now, but at the time the soldier wouldn’t tell us anything at all — and we very nearly got arrested too. If that cart-driver hadn’t come along and agreed to bring us to the villa in the cart, I believe we would have been tied up and locked in the dye house until reinforcements came.’ She had waved the slaves aside by now, and was plumping up my pillows with her own hand as she spoke — with a vigour which left me in no doubt as to what a shock all this had been.

‘You came here with Malodius?’ I said foolishly, as I snuggled luxuriously back into the bed.

She gave a short laugh. ‘Malodius — the evil-smelling one! Is that his name? I never heard it mentioned, but he deserved it, certainly. I’ve rarely had a more smelly and uncomfortable ride. I was forced to sit quite close behind him at the front. He already had that poor woman and her children on the cart — though goodness knows how anyone can think she was involved in any kidnapping. I’ve never seen a woman so frightened in my life.’

I was sufficiently interested to struggle up again. ‘He found her, then? Where is she? I ought to question her.’

She urged me back on to my cushions with a firm and wifely hand. ‘Then, husband, you will have to wait your turn. Marcus is proposing to speak to her himself. I saw her led away to wait for him.’ She shook her head. ‘Though I doubt that he will get very much from her. Poor lady, she is too frightened to tell him anything. I spoke to her a little in Celtic on the way — in the hope that old Smelly wouldn’t understand. She says that you found her at a house earlier today — someone had turned the whole place upside down and most of the valuables were gone. She is sure that she has been arrested in connection with the thefts — though she swears she hasn’t taken anything herself.’

‘It’s more serious than robbery,’ I said. ‘There was a woman murdered in that house.’

My wife was not as startled as I expected her to be. She shook her head. ‘I’m sure the woman in the cart didn’t know anything about a death. It was the missing items she was concerned about. She said there was a wooden money chest and some pretty silverware which were usually kept in a recess beside the fire, and she noticed that both were gone. She was sure that you would suspect her of taking them, unless the owner of the house came back and told you otherwise. An old woman who made herbal remedies, I understand, and made quite a little living out of them?’

‘She was the mother of the wet nurse who worked here,’ I said. ‘Myrna — the girl whose corpse we discovered in the house. I’m almost certain that she was involved in Julia’s kidnapping, and that her murder was somehow a result of that.’

Gwellia frowned. ‘But why would a wet nurse want to ransom Lallius?’ she asked. She gave a little smile. ‘In fact, when you listen to what I’ve got to tell, you might wonder why anybody would. I’ve been talking to his household servants for a while, and I can tell you this: his father would not have done anything to help — bribed the girl or anything like that — if that was what you had supposed. He has been far too ill in any case — but he would not have chosen to. He’d made it clear he would not speak to Lallius again, and even told the servants not to lend him cash.’

I had propped myself up on my elbow once again, but this time she made no move to force me to lie down. ‘Perhaps Myrna was a secret lover of Lallius?’

Gwellia gave a derisive snort. ‘Not according to the servants. Lallius’s interests did not lie that way. He preferred the company of boys, and even then he had to purchase them. He was not the sort of person who had many friends at all. In fact, it seems that he had only one — and that was another rather feckless youth, with tastes that the old man thought were equally depraved — a good deal too much wine, and gambling, and a fondness for hiring pretty slave-boys for the night and indulging in the most exotic food — peacocks’ tongues, and gilded swans, and all that sort of thing. The other boy could afford it — he’d recently inherited estates — but Lallius could not. He borrowed from the money-lenders. It scandalised Numidius, of course.’

I could imagine that from what I knew of the old man. He was the personification of cautious respectability: famously careful where money was concerned — he would walk a mile to save a quadrans, people said — and his hawk-like face and bony frame suggested that he was equally frugal with his meals. It was rumoured that he’d never held a banquet in his life — or been a guest at one.

‘So he was tired of paying Lallius’s debts? The boy did have an allowance from his father, I suppose?’ I said. The leisured sons of Roman citizens were usually given one. It was called a peculium, like the allowance of a slave, and it wasn’t very different from that in some respects. Unless a son was legally emancipated by a court, any who lived at home, of whatever age, was still under the legal power of the paterfamilias. And apart from anything he earned from military service, a son legally owned nothing of his own. Most young men married dowried women and set up households of their own, but Lallius had never done that. And no doubt his father gave him the minimum. Numidius was anxious to appear as like a Roman citizen as possible, but being generous to an idle son would not come easily to a man like that — especially when the youth had been born inside the walls and had the privileged status which he himself coveted.

Gwellia seemed to read my thoughts. She smiled. ‘An allowance, certainly, though not a very large one, I believe. Even then Numidius had threatened several times to cut it off, because his son was always running into debt and “bringing the family name into disrepute” he said. There was even talk of sending Lallius to the legions for a spell in the hope that a bit of army discipline would help to sort him out — Numidius knew an officer who was prepared to act as patron to the boy — but Lallius simply went on a drinking bout for days before he was supposed to meet the man. Of course, he would have failed to pass the physical examination and that would have disgraced the family even more. Numidius had to put it off — he was angrier than ever about that.’

‘The idea of gaining money of his own did not attract Lallius, then?’

‘Apparently he was furious about the whole idea, raging that he’d never had to lift a finger in his life, except to summon a slave to bring more wine, and that route marches in full kit would kill him in a week. He had the whole household completely terrified — they all say he is very nasty when he’s drunk.’

‘This friend is a bad influence, perhaps?’ I said.

‘Quite the opposite!’ my wife exclaimed. ‘It seems that Lallius was the leader in all their exploits from the start. They went to school together at the paedagogus in the town and Lallius was always getting his comrade into scrapes. Lallius was unpleasant even as a child — he modelled himself on the young Caligula. He was almost banished from the house when he was six years old, for deliberately setting fire to a dog. The sort of boy who pulls the legs off flies, and pulls fish from the water just to see them squirm. And he frightened this Cassius into following his lead. Anyway, even that friendship didn’t last, it seems. Cassius is the person who had Lallius brought to court — there was a fight about a gambling debt they owed, and Lallius took his money and knocked him down, he said.’

‘So no chance that Cassius is behind the ransom plot?’ I frowned. For a moment I’d thought I’d found the first plausible explanation for the whole affair. I was reluctant to abandon it.

Gwellia shook her head. ‘Nor any of the household servants, either, husband, I’m afraid.’ She had been rearranging the covers over me, but now she turned towards me with a little smile. ‘I had been hoping to find out something useful of that kind for you — some loyal slave who might have taken risks on Lallius’s account — but I cannot find a single servant in the house who has anything but hatred and contempt for him. They think it is disgraceful that he stayed away when his father was so desperately ill. True, he had been banished from the house, but they sent a message to him in the jail before he was released. Of course, they didn’t know about the kidnapping, and no doubt the soldiers frightened him away. But there was almost a feeling of relief that he has not come home. Good riddance to him, seems to be the general attitude. I wonder if he’ll come back for the funeral, now that Numidius is dead.’

‘Dead?’ The word was startled out of me. ‘I didn’t know that he was dead. I knew that he was dangerously ill. .’

‘Numidius died this morning, in the early hours. That is one reason why they let me in. They thought I was an anointing woman come to prepare the corpse. The servants were in quite a quandary what to do, in fact, since Lallius had not come home. Numidius would have wanted a Roman-style funeral, and it is properly the duty of the eldest son to close the eyes and start up the lament. So they’d sent out for the undertaker to arrange a pyre, and started the rituals themselves. The women did come round, a little afterwards, and I helped to wash the body and wrap it up in herbs and oil and lay it in the atrium on a bier. Quite pathetic, really. I don’t suppose there will be many visitors to mourn. Oh, don’t look at me like that — I’ve done the job before, and Numidius was not a lengthy task. The poor man had gone to skin and bone.’ She grinned. ‘Anyway, it was useful in the end. How do you suppose that I got past the soldiers and escaped the house?’

‘How did you?’ She clearly wanted to me to ask.

‘I simply walked out with the anointing women when they left. One ageing female with a basket looks very much like another, and I kept well to the middle of the group.’

I found that I was grinning back. ‘Pretending to be someone else has been the theme of this affair. But I’m so relieved it worked for you. You are resourceful, Gwellia.’

She was delighted by my praise, but all she said was, ‘Kurso was waiting at the workshop all this time. I knew that he would be concerned for me.’

The mention of attendants raised a question in my mind. ‘Lallius didn’t have a personal slave at all?’ I said. ‘Someone who might have tried to ransom him? It has been known for some servants to be foolishly attached — even to the most unlikely men.’ I winked at Junio.

This time she laughed aloud. ‘Well, he did have a servant, before he went to jail, but it seems that the slave took advantage of the imprisonment to throw himself on the mercy of the temple priests.’

‘Great Jupiter!’ I murmured, in genuine surprise. The punishment for a runaway is usually death, but there is one possible defence in law. If he can prove that his former owner was unnaturally cruel, he can appeal to another master who he hopes will be less unkind, pleading jeopardy in mitigation of his crime. But it is a desperate gamble, and not always justified.

‘No doubt he had the scars to prove his case — the other servants say that he was often cruelly whipped — because the priests found in his favour straight away and arranged to sell him on. So the boy is no longer in the town, and certainly he would not have worked to get his master free. Quite the contrary. The longer Lallius was locked up in jail, the more certain the slave was of escaping into sanctuary this time. Apparently he’d twice attempted to run away before, but his master dragged him back, and took delight in seeing he was punished savagely. Numidius rebuked Lallius for that as well, but the boy said he was only doing what Commodus did, and was his father going to criticise the Emperor? So Numidius was helpless. You know what would have happened if Lalllius had denounced him publicly?’

I did. ‘This Lallius sounds a most unpleasant character,’ I said. ‘No wonder his father had no time for him.’

Gwellia put down the oil lamp she was trimming, and came over to sit on Junio’s stool beside the bed. ‘That was probably the trouble, so the female servants say. The boy was never wanted from the start. His father blamed him for his mother’s death and would not even look at him for weeks. His wet nurse had to insist he came and picked him up.’

I nodded. It was a ceremony in every Roman home, and signified acceptance into the family. Without it the child had no claim at all.

‘All his life it has been much the same,’ my wife went on. ‘That nurse seems to have been the only one who cared — she seemed genuinely to be quite fond of him — but Numidius dismissed her as soon as the boy was old enough to wean and brought in tutors to “make a man of him”. He never bothered with the child himself, except to criticise. He saw the boy was not in want, of course — in fact when the boy was young he was more than generous, as if in that way he was doing his duty by the child. Lallius has never wanted for a single thing — except a little human company. His father did give him a puppy once, but I think I told you what became of that. It was a little better with his horse — Lallius learned to ride before he learned to walk, and the servants say that was the only time they ever heard him laugh.’

‘You would make me feel almost sorry for the youth, if it were not for that murdered girl I told you of.’ I began to give her an edited account of the horrors we had found.

She interrupted me. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Old Smelly-boots was telling us. He gave us all the details. No wonder that poor woman was so terrified.’ She looked at me. ‘Husband, do you really want to question her about the death?’

I shook my head. ‘She knew Myrna’s family, and that’s what interests me,’ I said. ‘I am quite sure that they were involved in this kidnapping somehow, and for some reason they seem to have wanted to suggest that it was me.’ I shook my head. ‘I still cannot understand it. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never spoken to the girl. Or to the mother either. Not even to buy her herbal remedies. I always get mine from the kindling-seller’s wife.’

It was Junio who spoke up from his post beside the door. ‘Don’t forget the doctor had a hand in all this, as well. Perhaps he had some dealing with the mother, over herbs.’

Gwellia stared at him. ‘The medicus? Oh, Junio, don’t be so absurd. The physician is a very clever man. He saved your master’s life, I’m sure of it, and. .’ She trailed into silence as she saw my face. ‘Husband, surely you don’t believe what Junio says?’

‘There was something odd about the doctor from the start,’ I said. ‘He was so secretive — and he clearly hated me. Because he knew I was suspicious, I believe. And now that he has disappeared without a word, I am more than ever sure that I was right.’

Gwellia was still frowning. ‘Disappeared? I thought that he had simply changed his mind about the charge.’

‘He left here without warning and never said a word,’ I replied. ‘Took all his books and scrolls and simply fled — and at the same time another ransom note turned up. Does that sound like a mere coincidence? The steward has sent the cart out after him, but I’m afraid he’ll get away. And we don’t even know where he was going.’

Gwellia stared. ‘But I do,’ she said, unexpectedly. ‘He took the carriage that had brought me back from town. He went back to Glevum in it.’

She must have seen my startled face. ‘You hired a carriage back?’

‘I’m sorry, husband. I know it was extravagant, but I was still worried about your state of health, especially since they wouldn’t let me come here yesterday. I could have had a litter, but there was Kurso too, and it was cheaper just to take a hiring-coach. Fortunately I had a little money with me. The driver had just dropped me at the roundhouse gate, and I was having an argument with the soldier — as I told you earlier — when the medicus came scuttling down the lane. He was hot and breathless, and when he saw the carriage he called out to it — said he was wanted urgently in town. The last I saw of him, he was climbing into it and swearing at the driver to be quick.’

I pushed the covers back and swung my feet on to the ground. ‘Then I must speak to Marcus urgently,’ I said. ‘I know he’s busy and he hasn’t summoned me, but we must find out who owns that carriage and ask questions of the man.’

Junio stepped obediently forward with my sandals ready to kneel down and face them on my feet. Gwellia rose too, as though to order him away and insist that I lie down on the bed again, but I forestalled her with a gesture of my hand. A sudden inspiration had just come to me.

‘Wait!’ I said. ‘I think I know who owns it. Great Minerva! How could I be such an idiot? I have had the answer all along. That woman with the children. She told us that Myrna’s sister had taken all the carts her father built as a dowry when she wed — to a man who owned a little business on this side of town. Was it a hiring-stables, do you think?’