A Roman Ransom

Chapter Seven

After what seemed like an eternity, but was in fact probably only a very little while, something did happen.

First there was a great deal of shouting further up the road, from where the logpile had been lying in the way. Then I could hear the snort of oxen and the crack of whips and I guessed that, in answer to Junio’s request for help, a party of land slaves from the villa farm had been sent out with some animals to move the logs. My suspicions were confirmed when a moment later there was first a pause and then a mighty clatter, followed by the sound of splintering and cheers.

Almost at once I was aware of running feet, and a good deal of hasty whispering nearby. I heard Philades’ voice: he had obviously come up beside the litter and was giving some order to the bearer-slaves, but he had dropped his tone so I could not catch exactly what it was. Then, without further warning, the litter lurched into the air again, and I resumed my jolting progress down the lane.

I closed my eyes and lay back in relief. Probably my fears had been irrational. Once inside the villa, I was safe. I cradled Marcellinus in my arms and permitted myself to drift into a doze, dreaming of the Roman comforts which Marcus had promised me.

A moment later, though, I started up again. Something about the motion was somehow different. The jerking, rhythmic rise and fall had ceased, and instead I was subject to a creaking roll, interspersed with sudden jolts and shocks. It took me a moment to work out what it meant, but then it came to me. I was no longer being carried by the litter-bearers. I had been put on to some kind of vehicle.

I raised a tiny corner of the curtain and looked out. I was right: the litter had been lifted on to a cart.

I was thoroughly disturbed by now. I struggled up to get a better view, though I took care not to waken the sleeping child in my arms. With the curtain wholly lifted I could glimpse the road below me through the wooden boards, and the back of the wagon-driver’s head. But otherwise the cart was empty. I was on my own. The medicus and the bearer-slaves were nowhere to be seen, and there was no sign at all of Junio.

Worse, we were not on the proper lane any longer. The ground that bumped beneath the wheels was not a track at all, but simply flattened soil — humped here and there in ridges as if it had been tilled. Somehow we had left the road and were jolting now across an open field.

I tried desperately to work out how this had been achieved, and only one explanation was possible. There is a little lane on Marcus’s estate, which meets the main road just before the gates, and leads round to the back entrance and the farm. The cart-driver must have turned that way and then branched out across the farm on this rutted trail which was not a route at all. I felt cold shivers running down my back. Where were they taking me?

I threw caution to the winds and thrust the curtain back. ‘Where are you going?’ I shouted to the man. ‘Take me to the villa, instantly.’

No answer.

I called to him again. ‘If you don’t, there will be serious trouble, I can promise you. His Excellence is expecting me. And don’t think you can hide what you have done. The cart is leaving tracks across this ground. My slave will have them looking for me very soon.’

He did not deign to turn his head, but the mention of Marcus did spark a response. ‘Just doing what I’m told!’

‘By whom? Where are you taking me?’

This time he made no reply at all, not so much as a grunt, but a moment later we turned sharply through a gate and bumped back on to a track. I was about to expostulate again when I saw a group of land slaves working in the field opposite. One of them was pushing on a breast plough to make furrows in the ground, while the others were following with buckets — planting beans, by the look of it. The planters stopped to watch us pass and one ran ahead to swing a gate for us. As he did so, I saw the villa straight in front of me.

The driver had turned the cart towards the house. Was it because I’d called to him? Had the doctor ordered him to come this way? And why? It was not possible that the rear lane was also blocked by logs, so there must have been some other reason for this unlikely route. To prevent me from speaking to the gate-keeper in front? Or had it been intended to take me somewhere else, until the driver realised that I was still awake?

‘Be sure that I shall tell your master about this. And where’s my slave?’ I called. Once again, the driver made no reply at all.

However, we were now visibly headed towards the back entrance of the house, so I dropped the curtain to exclude the draught — for the sleeping child’s sake, if not my own. Shortly afterwards we rumbled to a stop.

‘Hello, Malodius, what have we here?’ A burly gate-keeper pulled back the curtain-flap. I recognised the man from earlier visits to the house and I smiled with relief.

‘Greetings,’ I murmured, with heartfelt gratitude.

This man had let me into the villa more than once and I expected him to greet me with proper deference, but now he barely glanced at me before he burst out in a braying laugh. ‘A new kind of lying-in, is it, with an old grandfather instead of a mother, and a grubby child?’ He addressed himself to the driver as if I wasn’t there at all. ‘Surely you aren’t going to take this lot inside? Whatever’s the master going to say to that?’

The cart-driver had got down from his perch and come round to look. It was obvious, even from where I was lying, how he had got his name: Malodius means ‘the evil-smelling one’, or ‘stinky’ if you like. He was a man of middle years: a small, fat, scowling, hairy creature with a tattered tunic and bad teeth, and he gave off a strong scent of oxen and manure, and an odour of bad cheese that seemed to be his own. His impact was out of all proportion to his size.

He gave the door-keeper a bad-tempered scowl, deepening the creases in his face. He shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. I just do as I’m told. First I have to take the ox cart out and use the beasts to move a pile of logs that some confounded idiot contrived to leave right in the middle of the lane outside — well, I don’t mind that so much, it’s what the beasts are for — but then I have to bring this wretched litter in, as though I were a blooming carriage-driver if you please. And not even on the proper cart track either, but bumping all the back way through the fields. That’s the doctor’s orders — and he has to be obeyed. You know what Master has been like the last few days: anything the medicus decides is to be done at once, if not a little sooner. And all this while there were proper litter-bearers standing by. Don’t ask me why, ’cause I don’t know myself. I don’t even know who’s in the blessed thing.’

So my surmise was right. It was Philades who’d ordered him to take that most unlikely route. Yet only hours ago the doctor had been arguing against my travelling. Had he sent me along this rutted track, used only by the ox cart and the land slaves for their work, in the hope that, in my weakened state, it would be too much for me? Well, I was not submitting to any more of this. It was time to make my presence felt.

‘Don’t worry, gate-keeper,’ I said. I tried to sound as stern as possible, but instead of sounding masterful, my voice came out as a sort of feeble bleat. ‘I am a client of His Excellence. You’ve let me in before. I think you’ll find that he’s expecting me and has a room prepared. And this child in my arms is my patron’s missing heir. I assure you that your master will be best pleased with you if you permit me to take his son inside as soon as possible and get him warm and washed.’

‘Great Minerva!’ The gate-keeper came close and stared at me. ‘I know that voice. It is the pavement-maker, isn’t it? I’m sorry, citizen, you are so thin and pale I did not recognise you for a moment there. Malodius, what are you thinking of? This is the master’s client and — dear Mercury! — the master’s son as well — what are they doing on the oxen cart? There will be trouble when he hears of this. Citizen, I apologise a thousand times. I’ll send for some slaves at once, and have you carried in. Wait here, Malodius. I’ll go for help myself.’ He dropped the litter curtain and I heard him running off.

He had been positively grovelling, but the cart-driver was clearly not impressed. I heard him muttering to the ox as he unhitched it from the shafts. ‘Well, they can’t blame me,’ he grumbled. ‘I just do as I’m required. If they wanted a proper carriage for the job, they should have sent for it. It’s not as though there isn’t one to hand. Ready and waiting, too — I have to clean and polish it for hours every day. And what for, I’d like to know? It hasn’t been out since the mistress went missing. But do they think of that? Of course they don’t. They just put the litter on my cart and tell me to take it the back way through the fields to the gates — so that is precisely what I did. How was I supposed to know it was the master’s son aboard? Nobody ever tells me anything — and then it’s always my fault if anything goes wrong.’

How long he might have stood there muttering like that I cannot guess, but at that moment a whole troupe of Marcus’s slaves arrived, all matched and uniformed, and suddenly there were more people to assist than there were jobs to do. Eager hands seized the child, wrapped him in scented blankets and bore him tenderly away. Others were on hand to help me down. I too was swathed in blankets and half carried, half supported through the gate, across the outer court and peristyle, and into the inner garden and the back wing of the house.

It was the first time that I’d been fully on my feet since I fell ill, and though they asked about my welfare at almost every step, I found I was too weary and light-headed to say anything at all. I was content to go where they were leading me. It was obvious that they had their instructions on that score. Marcus has a pleasant inner garden, full of statues, fountains, flowers and herbs, quartered by paths and fringed by a verandaed colonnade that links the main block of the house with the sleeping rooms on either wing, and with the kitchen and storerooms at the back. The door to one guest apartment was ajar, and we paused outside it. I recognised the second-best bedroom in this whole part of the house: Julia herself had slept here until recently, when Marcus built a separate wing with new apartments for all three of them, set round a little courtyard of its own.

The room was waiting for me, with a proper Roman bed — a stretched goatskin suspended on a frame which gently bore one’s weight. I was lowered on to it, tucked into the finest woollen coverings, and piled around with soft pillows to support my head. The floor was heated by the hypocaust beneath, as it was in all the public areas, but the room had been made additionally snug on my account. A cheerful brazier stood by, exuding warmth, and a bowl of something steaming awaited me on the wooden cabinet beside the bed, and another on the table by the door. An emperor could not have asked for more.

Almost before I was properly ensconced, my patron came rushing in to me. As well as the usual retinue of slaves, including the young page whom I’d seen earlier, he was accompanied by a portly man in a flowing robe — whom I recognized as the high priest of Jupiter himself. Not only was I immersed in luxury, I seemed to be holding a sort of court as well.

‘Libertus, my old friend. What joyful news. The boy is back — and you, it seems, were there to rescue him.’ Marcus came right up to my bedside and held out his hand.

My fears about my welcome were unfounded, it appeared. I struggled up and kissed his seal ring, then sank back again. ‘I was in the litter. .’ I began.

His free hand waved me into silence. ‘The medicus has told me what occurred. Do not distress yourself. I’ll hear it all from your lips a little later on — for now it is enough that you are safe, and that the boy is too.’

‘He’s well?’ I was still ready for an outburst at the indignities which had been visited upon the child, but Marcus merely gave a nod.

‘He has been washed and cleaned and Philades is with him even now. Jupiter greatest and best be praised, it seems he’s taken no harm.’

‘Though he’s lost his bulla — don’t overlook that fact,’ the chief priest put in, self-importantly, as if the very mention of the god required him to speak. He was newly appointed to the post, after the death of the previous high priest, but — being florid, short and plump — he did not have his predecessor’s natural air of gravitas and authority.

Marcus looked more serious at once. ‘That is true, of course. I’d not forgotten it.’ He turned to me and smiled. ‘It means that I must leave you for a little while. My friend the pontifex’ — he indicated the priest — ‘instructs me that we must go to the main temple in the town and sacrifice a pure white calf at once.’

I was surprised into a whistle and an irreverent remark. ‘A pure white calf? Without any kind of mark? That will cost you a denarius or two. At such short notice, in particular.’

Far from upbraiding me for my impertinence, Marcus said gravely, ‘True, but it must be done as soon as possible. The pontifex knows where I can find one, at a price.’

The high priest must have read my doubts, because he hurried to explain. ‘It is quite essential, I assure you, Excellence. Both to give thanks for your son’s return and also to expiate the bulla’s loss — and then with the ashes we can reconsecrate the boy, give him a new neck charm and begin again. We’ll have a ritual at the altar here, on the first auspicious day. Tomorrow, if you can get a new bulla made in time.’

Marcus nodded. ‘I will try. I want it done as soon as possible.’

The high priest looked at me. ‘You were at the boy’s first naming ceremony, I understand? Perhaps you will be well enough to attend the second one. The ritual will be more pleasing to the gods if we can duplicate the first as closely as possible.’

I was about to answer, but Marcus shook his head. ‘We have the chief priest of Jupiter to officiate — that is sufficient to ensure success.’

The chief priest looked as if he were unsure whether to plump up with importance at this compliment or to be affronted by the way his words were swept aside. Eventually he settled for the preen. ‘All the same. .’ he ventured.

My patron said firmly, ‘Libertus has been ill; he must be left to rest. The medicus was emphatic on that point. In fact, it is against advice that I have come to see him now — but I felt I had to thank him for everything he’s done and assure him that everything is well. But now we must leave him to his well-earned sleep. Philades has left a soothing draught for him somewhere.’

‘But it’s on the tabletop!’ the pontifex exclaimed, following the direction of his glance. ‘Your friend cannot drink that! Have it disposed of instantly! Surely even a Greek physician is aware that leaving a remedy on a table is a dreadful augury for anyone who takes it afterwards?’

‘I’m sure he intended nothing of the kind,’ my patron said soothingly. ‘It is a purely Roman superstition, I am sure. All the same, I’ll have it moved at once. Page, see to it.’ The pretty young man did so immediately, and Marcus went on with a smile, ‘We’ll have another one made up for you. I don’t imagine there is any curse, but we won’t take any chances — there has been enough misfortune in this house already. And, speaking of propitiating fate, we must go at once and make that sacrifice. We will be back this evening, before — I hope and pray — Julia is returned to us as well. I have ordered my slaves to leave the gate open and unguarded, as I was told to do.’

I doubted that his wife’s return would be so easy, but he was optimistic and since I feared to cross his mood I contented myself with murmuring, ‘And Lallius?’

He smiled grimly. ‘I shall leave instructions with the garrison while I am in the town. Lallius will be arrested at his house, just as soon as I am certain that Julia is safe and send the word to them. I’ll have the guards round up all his associates and bring them in for questioning as well. Don’t worry, I have it all in hand. Now, try to get some sleep.’ He turned to his retinue. ‘Slaves, Libertus is to have anything he wants — subject to the doctor’s views, of course. But first he needs to rest. See that a watch is kept outside his door and that he’s not disturbed. Come, pontifex.’

And with that he gestured to the priest to follow him, and left the room with his servants obediently at his heels.