A Whispering of Spies

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘What?’ I found myself shouting. ‘Not the lictor? But Alcanta has just told us that it was!’

‘Well, it isn’t.’ Biccus was gazing intently at the grisly face. ‘But I can tell you who it is. I only glimpsed him for a moment once, when he set his dogs on me, but I’m fairly sure that is the man who used to own this farm. I never knew his name. Antonius, Antoninus, Antolinus — something of the kind.’

‘Dear gods!’ This time it was Emelius who spoke. ‘Antolinus! Of course it is! Didn’t have a beard and lots of curly hair when I last saw him, but that’s who it is. I thought that he was dead. But there’s no doubt about it. Antolinus Gallus. Optio in the Fourth Gauls Half-mounted Auxiliary Regiment.’ He shook his head.

I was still struggling to make sense of this. ‘So you think he was the driver of that treasure-cart? The owner of the belt that someone recognized? And this is what happened to the head?’

The centurion shook his head. ‘Not a chance of it. You saw that body that the death squad found. That man was forty if he was a day. Antolinus was comparatively young — as you can still see by the look of him. But I thought he had been murdered by rebels long ago — they said they found his body. .’ He trailed off. ‘But obviously it wasn’t him at all.’

‘Certainly it wasn’t, if this really is his head. I agree with you — this fellow is relative young and has not been dead for long. If it is your Antolinus, he must have been living somewhere in disguise. Oh, of course! Out here in the country, it’s quite obvious — running a farm he didn’t really understand and hoping the army would never think of looking there for him. A clever ruse, in fact. Often a runaway is better hidden very close to home. People always expect the opposite.’

‘Especially when they think he’s dead,’ Emelius said. ‘I expect there was an ambush but he managed to fight free. It must have been a rebel he hung up on the tree, dressed in his uniform and hacked to pieces to match the way they treated us. No doubt his companion was murdered in the raid and he just deserted, knowing that we wouldn’t look for him.’

‘No wonder he kept dogs to frighten neighbours off. It would have been certain death if they discovered him.’ I looked again at the bearded handsome face. ‘Though somebody obviously did kill him in the end. Probably Florens — though I don’t know why.’

I gestured to the requisition cart, where Florens and Servilis were being bundled in at sword-point, just as I had been — the councillor still protesting that he was innocent. ‘Is it my fault if rebels use my well?’ he was demanding, of no one in particular. ‘Libertus is talking nonsense when he accuses me. Like the rest of his assertions, it’s quite preposterous. Of course I didn’t kill the escort of the cart. How could I have done so? On the Ides the basilica was closed, but I was in the public baths all afternoon and in the evening Gaius had a special sacrifice to mark the day — half the curia was there! And you know yourself that I was in Glevum all day yesterday. And why should I kill the previous owner of this farm? I’d just bought it from him — there are records of the fact. What would I have to gain by killing him and chopping off his head?’

That was the problem with all of this, I thought. I could understand the murder of the lictor, possibly: Florens stood to profit, as Alcanta’s guardian, and more so if he took her as his wife, as she seemed to have agreed. So why bother to steal from the treasure-carts at all, let alone kill the escort in that appalling way? And what had this deserter got to do with it? Yet I was convinced that Florens was at the heart of this.

Emelius was looking equally perplexed, for reasons of his own. ‘But if this is Antolinus, where’s the body gone and, if this is not the lictor, where is Voluus?’ He gazed at me suddenly. ‘You don’t suppose we’ll find he isn’t dead at all?’

That would make nonsense of all my theories, I thought wearily. Florens would get nothing if the lictor was alive — indeed, he would be forced to marry Porteus’s girl. I had a sudden inspiration. ‘Wait a minute!’ I said the words aloud. Without waiting for permission I ran over to the cart. ‘You didn’t meet the lictor, but you went to Gaul? Don’t I remember that you told me that?’

Florens still had self-possession left. He looked disdainfully at me. ‘I met his family, as I told you. I never met the man.’

‘And yet he nominated you to be guardian for his wife?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘He knew my reputation as senior councillor, I suppose. Perhaps he learnt about me while he was over here. He sent a sealed message to me afterwards, inviting me to act in that capacity, should the need arise. Only while she is in Britannia of course; otherwise she goes back to her brother’s potestas. Is that so surprising? I can produce the letter if you like.’

‘So you only met his family while you were in Gaul? What family was that? I heard that Voluus had no other relatives. So was it his wife that you’re referring to? A foreign heiress that you hoped to wed? Only by then it was too late, of course — a binding contract had already been made with Voluus.’

Florens couldn’t answer; he was blustering. ‘I don’t know why you want to make an issue out of that. Of course I would have married Alcanta if I could. Who wouldn’t want to do so? She is very beautiful. But she was already promised and, as I say, I never met the lictor in my life.’

Brianus by now was standing at my heels and he tugged my tunic sleeve. ‘But he did know him, master. I told you so before. I saw them dining at the mansio.’

‘And he’s already told us that they discussed the farm!’ I pointed out. Then I realized what Brianus had said. I whirled around to him. ‘You mean it was this councillor who dined with Voluus at the mansio that night?’ I’d gone on thinking that Porteus was the dinner guest.

Florens was flustered. ‘Ah, of course. I had forgotten that occasion. There was such a fuss. We were in the mansio discussing the matter of the farm, but Voluus received some sort of threatening note and he lost his temper. It was embarrassing.’

Hardly an occasion to forget, I thought. Aloud, I said, ‘I hear you saw the contents of the note?’

He waved a vaguely self-important hand. ‘Vague threats — “you will be killed and all goods destroyed if you come to Glevum, I’ve not forgotten you” — that sort of thing. Not signed or sealed, of course. Voluus was simply furious. Swore that he would have the writer caught and brought to trial or even kill him with his own bare hands. I had to calm him down.’

Brianus was nodding. ‘That’s quite true, master. I saw it for myself. And master — my other master — must have been alarmed: he told me to get his luggage packed at once, because he’d changed his mind and was going straight back to Gaul. He wasn’t even stopping to acquire a horse — he was going to borrow one so he could start at once, and I was to join Calvinus and Pronta at the flat and he would send instructions as to what to do.’

Emelius and the soldiers — except the helmet man — had gathered round us and were listening to all this. ‘And did he send instructions?’ the centurion asked.

‘He sent them all the time,’ Brianus replied. ‘I couldn’t read them, but Calvinus could. Proper letters, sealed and everything. All the details about him moving over here: how many carts we were expecting and when they would arrive and what we could expect in every one of them.’

‘So it looks as if Calvinus really was involved?’ Emelius remarked. ‘I was beginning to wonder if we were mistaken about that.’

‘I think we’ve all been making a mistake,’ I said very slowly. ‘I don’t think the lictor wrote those messages at all.’

‘But he must have. .’ Brianus began, just as Florens snorted and said, ‘Who else would have written them? They were fastened with his seal.’

I looked into the pink-rimmed eyes again. ‘Exactly, councillor. The seal that was found on the finger of that severed hand last night. Obviously it was meant to suggest to us that this was Voluus’s corpse, when it was actually someone else — in this case Antolinus, I suspect. I should have realized that it was peculiar. Why rob a man and leave his toga-clasp and seal — both of which are likely to be valuable things?’

‘Well, it was not the first time,’ Florens pointed out. ‘One of the bodies of the escort still had a ring on it.’

‘Did it now?’ I asked him. ‘And how do you know that? I seem to recall that you were in the public baths all day and then attended a sacrificial banquet afterwards. How did you come to see the fingers of a corpse?’

Florens was fidgeting. ‘Servilis must have told me. He took a letter out there, when you were there yourself.’

Servilis said nothing. He was sitting silently, looking at his owner as if he hated him.

‘I don’t think so,’ Emelius observed. ‘The bodies were already in the death-cart when he came, and he went nowhere near it. I was there, also, and I can swear to that.’

‘You see,’ I said. ‘The councillor clearly did not see it for himself, but he knew that it had happened. And I think that I know why. It was all part of the plan. Leave one ring, and then another will not seem so strange, and chop the head and limbs off, so that people are much more difficult to identify? Who did it for you, Florens? Antolinus, I suppose? He had the knowledge to dissect a corpse, and a soldier would have a better stomach for the task.’

Emelius was shaking a bewildered head. ‘Why leave a ring at all?’

‘Because Florens had the lictor’s ring, that’s why, and he intended to leave it on a corpse for us to find — so we would believe that Voluus was newly dead. He took it from the body when he murdered him, of course — not recently but months ago, when he took Voluus to his villa on the promise of a horse. Brianus has just told us that his master borrowed one, and who more likely to have lent him one, than the councillor that he was dining with that night? But he never rode it. He was murdered then and there, and no doubt buried somewhere on the property. He wasn’t missed, of course. Everybody in Britannia thought that he’d returned to Gaul and those in Gaul supposed he was still here — especially when a series of sealed messages arrived. Most of them written by the councillor, no doubt, though Alcanta must have written some herself, saying what was in the carts and when they would arrive.’

Brianus looked hurt and mystified. ‘But why would my ex-mistress do a thing like that?’

‘Because she hoped to be united with the man she called her “love”, her so-called husband, by whom she’d had a child. She thought herself betrothed to him and would have married him — but her brother disapproved and had him conscripted before they could be wed. Perhaps they wrote in secret — I rather think they did — and she contrived to let him know that she was now with child.’

Emelius whistled. ‘So that’s why Antolinus faked his own death in that rebel raid? So he could run away to her? I recall the commander saying that the bodies that were found were still in uniform, but so badly hacked about, that if we had not known who was missing we could not have identified them for a burial.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘He must have loved the lady very much.’

‘The trouble was, I think she heard that he was dead, and there was the coming child to think about. Her brother might have thrown her from the house, so she was desperate to marry anyone as soon as possible. I think that’s where Florens’s role came into it. He discovered Antolinus — I’m not certain how, perhaps he really did want to acquire the farm from him — and worked out that he was a deserter in disguise. But instead of betraying him to the garrison, he listened to the story and, seeing an opportunity, cooked up a plan. He would go to Gaul, contract to wed the girl, bring her back and keep the huge dowry as his own reward, while she went off with Antolinus to his farm. I’ve no proof of that of course, but it seems the likely explanation of events. And Marcus told me that Florens tried to wed a foreign heiress once.’

‘You are quite right, citizen.’ Alcanta had regained her feet and had come — unnoticed — to listen in. Her face was drawn and stained with recent tears, but she held her head high and spoke with dignity. ‘That’s exactly what he did.’ She gave a little sob — not of grief but fury, I was amazed to realize. ‘Florens is very good at little plans like that. But when he got to me, it was far too late. My brother had contracted me to Voluus by then.’

Florens gave a roar and tried to lunge at her. Three soldiers pounced on him at once, and this time — councillor or not — they bound him hand and foot: none too gently, either, using the ties of his own tunic to secure his knees.

Alcanta blinked at him. ‘Don’t hurt him too much. I still owe him a little bit of gratitude.’ She turned to me. ‘Have you ever met the lictor, citizen? I wish I never had. He was a brute, a monster — he loved to cause you pain. When Florens told me that Antolinus was alive and that there might be a chance of seeing him, I pleaded with my husband to give me a divorce. He only laughed, of course, twisting my arm until he forced the truth from me — or most of it. I managed to hold out and not to tell him where Antolinus was — he would only have had him hunted down and put to death for desertion. Neither did I tell him that I was with child, because he would have realized that it was not his own. But Florens had a plan. He wrote to Voluus, inviting him to come here to Britannia — promising a future on the curia, a welcome banquet and all sorts of things. Voluus was flattered — he was always vain. He came to Glevum practically at once. It worked out splendidly. I had the child in peace.’

‘While Florens met him here and arranged to murder him!’ I said, casting a triumphant look towards the councillor. ‘Having contrived to be nominated as your guardian?’

She shook her head. ‘It should not have happened exactly as it did. The intention was to poison him after we’d all arrived in Britannia — these things can happen with unfamiliar food. But Voluus had spies. One of my servants wrote to him while he was here and told him of the child — I had meant to pass it off as belonging to a maid until after Voluus was dead.’

‘I see! So that was the letter that Voluus received that day in the mansio?’ It was making sense at last. That kind of fury comes from jealousy, not fear. ‘Not a threat at all!’

She nodded. ‘He was so furious that he threatened to return home that very day. He would have murdered me. Fortunately Florens intercepted him.’

Brianus was pawing at my arm again. ‘But I’m sure I heard that the letter was a threat. It was discovered afterwards, at the mansio.’

‘Not that letter, Brianus,’ I told him solemnly. ‘That message was destroyed. You told me Florens read it — and it gave him an idea. He had already planned to murder Voluus, but if he wrote another letter and left it to be found that would start the rumour of the threats. I imagine he wrote sealed letters to the house in Gaul, apparently from Voluus himself, explaining that the lictor wasn’t coming back, and making arrangements for moving all the goods. No one but Alcanta would have known about the truth, and she was quite content. She hoped to be reunited with her love in exchange for everything she had. But there had to be a body, representing Voluus, or some awkward questions would be asked. That’s where the threats came in. The authorities would look for ancient enemies.’

I looked at Alcanta. She didn’t disagree. ‘We never thought of Calvinus as a likely suspect. He had an ancient grudge against his master, it appears — but with a man like Voluus, there were sure to be others that we didn’t know about. His death was not a loss to anyone. It was a clever thought.’

Florens sighed. Suddenly the fight had all gone out of him. ‘It might have worked, as well, if Antolinus had kept things as simple as we’d planned. Arrange to have the treasure-cart come in here overnight, give the escort poppy-wine and steal the treasure while they slept to make the threats seem true. But there was a sudden problem — Antolinus sent to me, saying that he had been recognized. The driver of the treasure-cart was somebody he knew. There was only one answer. We had to kill the man. Antolinus did it — poison in the wine — but we still wanted people to know about the threats. He came up with the scheme about the bogus rebel raid. I was at a banquet, and I couldn’t help. He did it the same way as he’d done before, except that this time there were five corpses to arrange. He couldn’t do it on the road — it would have taken too much time — so he cut the bodies into pieces in the barn and put them on the cart. Then he had the problem of the horses, too. If he kept them here it would excite remark, so he took them to the roadside and simply slaughtered them as well — except for the one that he kept back to ride. Spread the blood around to make it look as if the party had been stabbed and hacked to death. It was a risk, of course, but he got away with it. Rode off into the forest as soon as he spotted the first witness on the road. He was an expert horseman. Just as well — he could not have managed six horses otherwise, even if four of them were towed behind the cart.’ He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t meant to happen. It was an accident of fate.’

‘How do you know all that? You must have talked to him. And suddenly he’s dead! Was that an accident?’ Alcanta’s eyes were blazing and she clenched her pretty fists. ‘So close, and yet I missed him. And you used his body as my husband’s corpse, when you promised me that it would be some nameless criminal! I can’t forgive that, Florens. I don’t care if they feed me to the beasts. I’m going to tell the truth.’ She turned to the centurion. ‘He wrote to me — under my husband’s seal, of course! — about a moon ago to tell me that Antolinus really had been killed this time. Lies, of course, but he promised that, if I continued with the plan, I could come to Britannia and he would marry me himself and give the child a home, since of course I had no husband now. I, like a fool, believed him and went along with it. I even thanked him when he offered me the farmstead as a home, when all the time my lover’s head was in the well. He must have put it there.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ Florens said. ‘How could I have done? I was in Glevum all day yesterday — Libertus was with me a great deal of the time — and in the evening I was looking after you! When did I have time to kill him, tell me that? I couldn’t ride out to this farmstead in the time I had.’

She thought for a moment and then hissed angrily, ‘But you knew that he was dead. You had already told me that he was. And all that time he was actually alive. I don’t know how you did it, but it must have been your plan.’ She shook her head. ‘And I can’t imagine why. You already had the treasure — it was out here on the farm. You didn’t even have to move it once the escort-men were dead.’

‘But it’s as clear as daylight, lady.’ Biccus found his voice. ‘He’d seen you by then. It was you he wanted, not just the contents of the treasure-cart. And who could blame him? I would marry you myself.’ He sank back into silence.

‘And I think I know who murdered Antolinus for him,’ I observed. ‘Someone who would not be wanted at the banquet feast. Someone who was doubtless promised a reward and, like Calvinus, is hoping someday to be free and rid himself of his uncomfortable name. Somebody who killed the maidservant as well, so she could not swear that the body was not Voluus at all. Is that not true, Servilis?’

Servilis scowled. ‘They both deserved the penalty, even under law. One was a deserter and one a runaway. There is an automatic death penalty for both, and I was acting on the orders of a magistrate. I don’t think that you can punish me for that.’

I turned back to Emelius. ‘Centurion, I think we have the answers now. You are under orders to present me at the court. I would like you to do so, and bring these people, too. I believe I shall be able to prove my innocence. Though I may be in trouble for requisitioning a cart.’