Enemies of the Empire

Chapter Six

I found myself gazing pointlessly up and down the empty street. I would have wagered a great deal that Promptillius had the kind of dogged and dutiful stupidity which would have kept him remaining obediently in a burning shop, if someone had not ordered him to move. But there was not the slightest sign of him.

Matters were looking distinctly menacing. Spotty Laxus still had his dagger at my back, and for a moment I thought that Cupidus was going to urge him on, but at that instant a grubby boy came out of the pastry shop. He was thin, half starved and wispy, perhaps seven or eight years old, and he was carrying a board, on which was piled what looked like the wood-ash of a fire. I guessed he was a slave-boy, set to work to clean the ovens out ready for the next day’s cookery: it is not unusual for tradesmen, even humble ones, to have young slaves like this, especially when they sell necessities. There is always some family more wretched than their own which has not the wherewithal to pay its bills and is happy to offer an unwanted child instead, reducing the number of hungry mouths to feed.

There was an oil lamp still burning in the shop, judging by the glow that filled the door, and the child stood a moment on the threshold, blinking in the dark. When he saw us he stiffened. ‘What are you doing here again? My master has already paid his dues this month.’ He was trembling so much that he spilt some of his ash, and he looked as if he would have bolted back inside if he had dared.

Cupidus came up behind me and seized me by the neck. He said, unpleasantly, ‘It’s not you we’re after. . this time. We’re looking for a non-existent slave. This lying wretch,’ he gave me such a shake that my teeth rattled, ‘declares he left one waiting here. You get on with what you’re doing, and be quick or I’ll tell your master you were standing gossiping.’

The lad’s eyes were wide with fright: the whites shone in the moonlight. He knelt to scrape up as much as possible of what he’d spilt, and, failing, scuttled round the corner to the passageway where obviously the household’s midden was.

As he was disappearing, I called after him. ‘I don’t suppose, since you were working here, that you happened to see anyone yourself?’ I guessed that he was not often spoken to without a curse or a blow, and I deliberately used a courteous form of words and tried to make my tone as kind as possible.

It worked. He stopped and looked at me, then volunteered, ‘A plumpish fellow with a big round lumpy face?’

I nodded. ‘Exactly like a loaf of unbaked bread.’

That made him smile. ‘I saw him. Wearing a scarlet tunic you could hardly miss. He was standing over there.’ He nodded towards the pavement opposite.

Big-ears turned to Cupidus. ‘There you are, you see. It’s just as well I didn’t let you two go rushing into things. It seems there really was a slave.’ He was clearly the most nervous of the three, which was probably why he had been the voice, throughout, of caution and restraint.

Cupidus gave his nasty grin again. ‘And how do we know that? We’ve only got his word for it — his and this wretched slave’s. They probably arranged all this between themselves. Amazing what people will agree to say, if you promise to pay them a sestertius or two.’

The child was shaking his head nervously. ‘He was there for simply ages. You ask anyone. You couldn’t help but notice him: he was dressed in such a fancy tunic, like a uniform, and he seemed to be in everybody’s way. I wondered what he was doing there.’

I nodded. That sounded like Promptillius to me. ‘When did he give up waiting?’

The child shrugged, cascading another little pile of ash. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t answer that. He was here last time I looked, that’s all I know.’

‘And how long ago was that? An hour? Or more?’ Aurissimus snapped out.

The boy had found confidence from somewhere, because he answered back. ‘I don’t know. How am I supposed to tell? No water clocks in our house.’ Aurissimus took a threatening step towards him, and he added hastily, ‘Just before sundown. I came out to get more logs and charcoal for the fire, and I noticed he was still hanging around then.’ He frowned. ‘Talking to somebody, I think, now I look back on it.’

‘What sort of somebody?’ Surprise and anxiety made me sound as sharp as my companions had, and I saw the poor lad flinch instinctively. I softened my voice, and added, ‘Can you remember that?’

He was terrified, you could see it in his face, but he shook his head. ‘I wasn’t paying much attention at the time. My master beats me if I take too long. He’ll beat me now, when I get in again.’

‘Nothing to what we’ll do, if you can’t tell us more than that.’ Cupidus was scornful. ‘Show him your dagger, Laxus.’ Laxus waved it, dangerously close. ‘Does that refresh your memory at all?’

The poor lad was almost blubbering by now, and the board slipped entirely from his hands and clattered to the ground. ‘A boy, I think. A big boy — that’s right — he had a cup and ball. That’s all I know. I remember looking at it and wishing that I had one like that.’

‘Huh! Not good enough. .’ Cupidus began, and motioned Laxus forward with his blade. What would have happened to the little lad I cannot guess, but my startled exclamation interrupted them.

‘Rufinus! Lyra’s messenger!’ I said. ‘You’re sure about the toy?’ I turned towards the child-slave, who had dropped to his knees and was trying feverishly to scoop up the scattered ashes with pathetic, trembling hands. He glanced up at me with a tearstained face.

‘I didn’t really look at anything but that,’ he managed, between sobs. ‘I’m sorry, sirs. I didn’t think it mattered. It’s all I can remember — honestly. I swear by all the gods. .’ He went back to scrabbling at his hopeless task again. It was clear that he feared a thrashing from his master over it.

His plight touched me, so that for a moment I forgot my own potential danger and, ignoring Laxus and his knife, went over and squatted on my haunches next to him. ‘Of course you were looking at the cup and ball. Because you longed to have one of your own?’

The child looked up at me. ‘I never had a toy. I had a sort of cart-thing once my father carved for me, but when he sold me to the pastry-cook. .’

My turn to nod. I too had been a slave, but only as an adult. My childhood had been a very happy one, full of dogs and horses and gambols on the cliffs and in the streams, with playthings and playfellows aplenty. What this child’s miserable existence must have been, I could only half imagine.

‘He was amazing,’ the boy added, with tearful eagerness, as if sharing a special confidence. ‘He kept the ball up all the time and never dropped it once. I got a thrashing when I got inside for watching him so long. I’m sorry if I should have noticed more.’

‘You did very well,’ I said, and he looked so grateful that it touched my heart. Praise was as rare as toys in his young life. ‘Here.’ I put a hand into my purse and pressed a sestertius into his hand. He looked incredulous. It would be taken from him, like as not, but I felt that some reward was due. ‘Tell your master you have been delayed by helping a Roman citizen to find a missing slave, and that I will be here in the morning to buy some honey cakes. Tell him to put half a dozen on one side for me. Here’s half a denarius to pay for them.’ With any luck, I reasoned, a lucrative order from a customer would be enough to soothe his master’s wrath.

He flashed me an uncertain smile, and hurried round the corner with the coins and what little ash he’d succeeded in collecting up again. The others made no move to stop him going.

‘Very pretty,’ Cupidus jeered. ‘And you expect us to believe that the boy is not in your employ? Or in the pay of your bath-side friends? Well, let me tell you, this is my father’s area. He won’t take kindly to your bribing servants here to tell their confounded little lies for you.’ He shouldered up to me, more belligerent than ever, and made to seize me by the neck again.

Aurissimus restrained him. ‘Cupidus, don’t be more stupid than you have to be. All right, you can’t recognise a cheating net man when you see one, but can’t you take in what’s right before your eyes?’ He turned to me. ‘You said the youth who came was Lyra’s messenger. Who’s Lyra?’

I was about to protest that surely he must know who Lyra was, and then of course I realised that he did and he was testing me. I remembered the reaction to her name from the keeper of the thermopolium, and I said hastily, ‘I was in the town, looking for a silver cloak clasp for my wife. Lyra approached me and offered me her girls. She gave me an address — the street of the oil-lamp sellers — although I didn’t go there at the time.’ If the spy system in this part of town was half as good as that in the bath-house area, I knew that my movements could easily be checked. I didn’t mention Plautus. I was certain that part of the story would never be believed.

Big-ears was looking at me with amused contempt. ‘But you went there later, did you? After dark.’

I was reluctant to say anything which might be proved false. I compromised. ‘I never found it,’ I said truthfully.

He laughed. ‘So you got lost and wandered round the bath-house area? Lyra’s wolf-house isn’t over there — it’s on this side of Venta, where all the soldiers go. No wonder you were followed. A thief, most likely, hoping for your purse. It’s a marvel someone didn’t cut your throat. They don’t like strangers in that part of town.’ He turned to his companions. ‘I don’t believe the man’s a spy at all. He’s just an idiot who can’t control what hangs between his legs. That’s why he wasn’t present at the games. Made some excuse and sneaked off in the dark, looking for the wolf-house. It all makes sense. That’s why the poor fool left his slave behind. I’ll bet he’s got a wife at home, as well, and didn’t want her finding out where he had been.’ He gave another hoot of mocking mirth. ‘And then he didn’t find it after all. It’s true. He can’t have done. He gave money to that slave. Lyra wouldn’t leave a customer with silver in his purse. If he didn’t spend it willingly, the girls would get it from his clothes while he was occupied with something else.’

‘But surely she can’t steal from them?’ I was startled into speech. ‘The penalties. .’

He swept my words aside. ‘You may come from a big city, stranger, but you’re strangely innocent. Of course she’d have your purse. It often happens. Very few complain — not when they’ve been busy with one of Lyra’s specialists. If it came to court, they’d be a laughing-stock.’

I resisted the temptation to retort that he clearly knew all about the brothel and its ways. It was obvious that Big-ears was the self-appointed thinker of the group and saw himself as the voice of reason. I suspected that this was less the product of intelligence than the result of his being the most nervous of the three, but since he was arguing for my release I held my tongue. Neither did I voice the sudden thought which I had almost blurted out a moment earlier: why had Lyra sent Rufinus to find my slave? How had she known that I possessed one, come to that? I’d assumed the boy had been sent to warn Plautus, but it seemed that I was wrong.

In fact, it was a mystery which I found troubling. I had parted company with Promptillius long before I spotted Plautus and went after him, so when Lyra had approached me it was in an altogether different part of town. So how had anyone identified Promptillius as mine? And what was the message that Rufinus passed on to him?

For there had been some sort of message, I was sure of that, and probably ostensibly from me. It was the only thing I could imagine that would have persuaded the stolid Promptillius to desert his post. I said quickly, before Big-ears had time to think this through himself, ‘Well, if you gentlemen are satisfied, I should be getting back. My party will be concerned for me by now, and sending out a search, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

Cupidus was lurching into thought. ‘So, where’s your slave gone now?’

It was a question I had asked myself and failed to find a convincing answer for, but I said — with what I hoped was confidence — ‘Gone back to the mansio, I should think. Do you want to come there with me and see? You can check out my story with the guard.’

I half hoped they would give up at this, and let me go, but to my surprise they all three seized on it, and a moment later we were walking, single file, in the direction of the military inn. Laxus walked behind me, uncomfortably close, and I was aware of the dagger which he still held unsheathed, but hidden now beneath his cloak, presumably in case the guard should notice it. I wondered what would happen if I denounced him to the sentry on the gate, but it was not an experiment I cared to make. Spotty-face was clearly anxious to prove himself a man, fearless and ready with a knife. I didn’t wish to provide him with the opportunity.

As we approached, the soldier on guard duty came out to block our way. ‘Who is it, and what’s your business here?’

Laxus urged me forward with his blade. I took a step into the ring of light which blazed from the torches hanging on the wall. The burly guard drew his sword and looked me up and down. ‘What are you doing here? And who are these?’ He examined my companions, his armour glittering in the torchlight with a hundred little reflected flames. ‘I know you three. Get off home, or I’ll report you to your fathers. I am surprised at you, old man, cavorting with these rogues. You’ve no idea the trouble they cause.’

‘Not cavorting,’ I said firmly. ‘I asked them the way, that’s all. And perhaps you could resolve a little disagreement we had. I say that Marcus Aurelius Septimus brought a citizen-client of his here today, before he went to the games. Can you confirm that?’

The soldier seemed to think a moment before answering. ‘A bet, is it? Well, what you say is true. I can’t see why I shouldn’t tell you that. It’s no secret that His Excellence was here. But his client is not here at the moment, if that’s who you want. He went off shopping in the market with a slave, and he’s not yet returned. The slave came back alone a little while ago.’

That reassured me. Promptillius was safe. When I got inside I’d talk to him and try to piece together what exactly had gone on, and who had sent him the order to go home. I turned to Cupidus. ‘You see? It is all exactly as I said. I was telling you the truth.’

They seemed to realise the force of this. The effect upon all three of them was startling. I have seen something of the kind before, when people have discovered suddenly that I’m a Roman citizen and under the protection of the law — and these three had more to fear from that than most. Not only were they possibly guilty of injuria — infraction of my dignity — they’d actually laid violent hands on me. And I knew about that dagger, too.

Laxus had turned sallower than ever in the torchlight. ‘I never touched you,’ he protested fervently. ‘It was them. They urged me on. They thought you were a spy.’

Cupidus was vigorous in self-defence. ‘Well, you can’t altogether blame us, citizen. You come lurking round the tavern in the dark, dressed like a nobody, and start hiding in doorways and sidling up to us. What are we going to think? It’s just the sort of nasty trick those bath-siders would use — sending a stranger round to spy on us, pretending he had come to ask the way.’ His voice was shriller now and he was talking fast. ‘We’ve had this sort of thing before, and the next day or week or month, you can depend on it, there is an ambush somewhere off the beaten track and some member of our family is attacked or disappears. No wonder we treat outsiders with distrust. Why, if I get hold of one of them I’ll. .’

Aurissimus took him gently by the arm. ‘Come on, Cupidus, that’s enough. You’ve made your point. We’ve had too much to drink. Let’s go, before this citizen decides to lay a charge.’ And, rather reluctantly, Cupidus allowed himself to be led away, with Laxus trailing after them.

I stood and watched them till they were out of sight. Only then did I start to feel secure.

The guard must have read my feelings in my face. ‘You look relieved to see the back of them. If they’ve been harassing you, you should have told me so. I’d have had them in for questioning and pleased to do it too.’ He winked. ‘We’ve had a lot of trouble with young men like that — writing on buildings, fighting in the street, pawing women and frightening the elderly. But of course, I know those three — all sons of wealthy fathers hereabouts. Their families have got influence, and no one local dares to bring a charge.’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s come over young people nowadays. No respect for proper authority, that’s what. It’s all down to drink. Too much money and not enough to do.’

He was obviously inclined to chat and I was glad to hear a friendly voice. I was in no danger here. ‘They do come from important families, then?’ I said. ‘I rather guessed as much.’

His teeth gleamed in the torchlight as he grinned. ‘Not as important as they’d like to be. Those three cousins in particular. You know what it’s like. When we got here — the army, that is — and took over in the area, we laid out the town and appointed a few of the most loyal local chiefs to help us run it — made them citizens and put them on the council, all that sort of thing.’

I frowned. ‘Their fathers are on the ordo?’ If those youths were citizens as well, that put a different complexion on the thing.

My informant laughed. ‘Nothing so exalted. But they would like to be. Set themselves up as patrons of the town, at considerable expense, and run the local suburb where they live — they’re on every council and committee which doesn’t actually require you to be a citizen — and try to court favour with the authorities, but at the same time they resent us, because we didn’t select them as councillors in the first place.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps we should have done. They fought beside us too. But nothing is ever simple round here. The tribes are always quarrelling among themselves, and it’s hard to work out who are the natural chiefs.’ Like many soldiers he talked of the Roman Empire as ‘we’, as if imperial decisions were his personal concern.

‘I understand there’s quite a lot of tension in the town. Rival groups have power in different parts of it.’

His face closed like a door. ‘Not as far as we’re concerned, they don’t. The civil administration works, that’s all that worries us. If these people want to carry on old feuds behind locked doors, that’s up to them. As long as they don’t interfere with the free passage of supplies and troops, they can murder one another till there’s no one left, as far as I’m concerned. Just provided they don’t start bringing cases to the courts, and that’s not very likely. Now — you’ve kept me gossiping too long. Move on.’

Obviously I had touched a nerve. I flashed a smile. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Thank you for being so helpful. I’ll see that His Excellence hears of it. Goodnight.’ I started to walk past him into the mansio.

The sword flashed down across the entrance like lightning, forming a gleaming barrier. ‘And what do you think you’re up to? You can’t go in there.’