Murder in the Forum

Chapter One

The man lying outside the basilica was dead. Messily dead, the way a person is apt to be when he has been dragged for miles at the wheels of an official Roman carriage. As this man had obviously been.

This was not a clever deduction on my part. The official Roman carriage in question was standing right in front of me, and the unfortunate victim was still attached to it, his hands bound to his sides, so that he could not protect his face, and the chains just long enough to protract the agony, allowing him to stumble after the cart until his heart was bursting, and then when he tripped — as he inevitably would — dragging him remorselessly headlong. The official Roman who must have given the instructions was still sitting smugly inside his conveyance.

I looked at the hapless corpse and blanched. Not at the battered head and bloodied limbs — I had seen men executed this way before — but at the remnants of uniform which still adhered to the body. That scarlet tunic and golden edging meant one thing only: the wearer was a servant of my patron, Marcus Septimus Aurelius, the regional governor’s personal representative. In fact, I suspected that I knew the victim. It was hard to be sure, of course, after such a death, but I thought it was a rather pompous young envoy whom Marcus had once sent with me when I was investigating a crime: an arrogant, self-important youth, vain of his pretty looks.

Not any more.

I glanced at the smug Roman. Of course, he was a stranger (and carrying an official warrant to travel, or the carriage would not have been permitted within the gates during the hours of daylight), but one didn’t have to hail from Glevum to see that the man he had executed was no ordinary slave. Anyone sporting that fancy uniform was clearly the cherished possession of a particularly wealthy and powerful man. So either the man in the carriage was a passing imbecile who had lost the will to live, or he was a very important personage indeed.

He saw me gawping. ‘Well?’ He threw open the door of his carriage. I realised that up until now he had been waiting for someone to do it for him, though his carriage-driver attendant was nowhere in evidence. He didn’t get out. ‘You! You are here to attend on Marcus Aurelius Septimus?’

I gulped. There was no simple answer to this. Yes, I was there on my patron’s business, I had just been visiting his official rooms, but I was not exactly ‘attending’ him since he was twenty-odd miles away, doing a bit of ‘attending’ of his own. Marcus had recently lost his heart — or at least his inhibitions — to a wealthy widow in Corinium and he was there again, doubtless neglecting the affairs of state to pursue affairs of a more personal nature. I pondered my reply. The man in the carriage did not look as if he would have time for fine distinctions.

I was right.

‘Well, are you or aren’t you? I want an audience with your master.’

The tone alarmed me. It was deliberately insulting. Bad enough if I had been wearing my usual tunic and cloak, but (since I was visiting Marcus’s rooms) I was wearing a toga, which only citizens can wear. That should have ensured me a little respect: I was a Roman citizen as much as he was, and he could see that perfectly well. Yet the man addressed me as if I were a slave.

I didn’t protest. I had just glimpsed the toga he was wearing. A purple edging-stripe is a sign of high birth or high office — the broader the better — and the smug Roman had a deep purple stripe so wide it seemed to reach halfway round his body. I have never seen so much purple on a single garment. On his finger glittered the largest seal-ring I have ever seen: even at this distance I could make out the intricate design. And he spoke in the strange clipped tones of the Imperial City itself. Mere citizenship would not protect me from this Roman, toga or no toga.

I said, humbly, ‘Marcus is not here, Excellence.’

‘So I was told.’ He glanced disdainfully over his shoulder, towards the shattered body on the flagstones.

I swallowed harder. This, presumably, was the news for which my poor vain, arrogant friend had paid with his life. I was talking to an old-style Roman then. Perhaps the man had imperial connections. The Emperor Commodus, too, was said regularly to execute messengers who brought unwelcome tidings. That kind of casual barbarity was rarer in Glevum, under my patron’s comparatively benevolent eye — though Marcus was an Aurelian himself, and rumoured to have connections in the very highest places.

I, however, had none and that was worrying me. I was a mere freed-man, and although I had been awarded citizen status on the death of my ex-master, Marcus was my only protector.

A crowd was beginning to gather at the verandaed stalls on the other side of the forum, keeping a discreet distance, but pointing and whispering with undisguised curiosity. The Roman was beginning to look dangerous. Clearly he was not accustomed to being goggled at by a raggletailed crowd like this: slaves, thieves, shoppers, beggars, scribes and stallholders, to say nothing of itinerant butchers, pie-sellers, cobblers, bead-merchants, turnip-sellers and old-clothes men. Equally clearly, he didn’t like it. I wished I had my patron’s protection now.

But at this moment, Marcus was a day’s journey away, his envoy was dead, and I was about to bring this visitor even more unwelcome tidings. Marcus was not only absent, he was likely to be away for some days. I felt that the information might be injurious to my health.

I said carefully, ‘I am sure, Excellence, my patron would wish to entertain you, if he were here. .’

The eyes which met mine were stonier than those of the painted basalt Jupiter on the civic column behind me. Their owner was about as communicative as the statue, too. He said nothing. The silence was deafening.

‘If only, most revered Excellence, I knew whom I had the honour of addressing. .’ I mumbled, keeping myself at a respectful distance, and ensuring that my bowing and shuffling meant that my head stayed decently lower than his. This wasn’t easy, since he was still sitting in the carriage and I was standing on the flagstones outside, but I managed it. Marcus calls me an ‘independent thinker’, but I can grovel as abjectly as the next man when the moment demands. Even my best grovelling produced no flicker of a thaw in the Roman’s manner, but it did provoke a response.

‘My name is Lucius Tigidius Perennis Felix. Remember it.’

I was hardly likely to forget it. Some years ago a man called Tigidius Perennis had held the post of Prefect of Rome, and become the most feared and powerful man in the world after the Emperor Commodus himself. Of course, this was not the same Perennis. That particular Prefect had long since fallen from favour, and been handed to the mob for lynching. But that only made this man the more dangerous. Anyone who bore the Perennis name and survived was obviously someone to be reckoned with.

Most of the Prefect’s family had been executed with him, so any relative — especially a namesake — must have enjoyed special protection to escape as this man had. I realised, with some dismay, that I was probably talking to a favourite of the Emperor himself. That would explain the nickname ‘Felix’ — the fortunate — and why the man was now driving around the Empire on an official warrant, with an imperial carriage at his command.

I said, fervently, ‘I shall not forget it, Excellence. Your name is written on my very soul.’

That was no lie. Branded on my brain would have been nearer the truth. In fact the more I thought about it, the more alarmed I became. This man was an imperial favourite — and although Commodus called himself ‘Britannicus’ this was not his best-loved island. There had been several military plots here to overthrow him, and to install the governor, Pertinax, as Emperor in his place — that self-same Pertinax who was Marcus’s particular friend and patron. Of course, the plots had been put down, by Pertinax himself, but Commodus still suspected conspiracy on every hand — and here was his emissary from Rome, looking for Marcus.

Yesterday the official augurers at the temple had warned of ‘unexpected storms’. I liked the arrival of Perennis Felix less and less.

My feelings must have been showing in my face. Felix, for the first time, allowed himself to smile slightly. It was not an attractive smile and his voice was positively poisonous as he said, sweetly, ‘A problem, citizen?’

I had, at least, acquired the courtesy of a title. I was debating whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was the less dangerous answer to his question when we were interrupted by the arrival of a swarthy soldier striding down the basilica steps at the head of a delegation of magistrates. That alone was enough to confirm his status — this was Felix’s driver. No ordinary soldier would dare to force the civic dignitaries into second place. He did not so much as glance at me as he strode past me to the carriage and, assisting his passenger to the pavement (as if Felix was a delicate woman instead of a strong and very ugly man), engaged him at once in hushed and private conversation.

The magistrates hovered behind him, not daring to interrupt. Glevum is an important city, a republic in its own right within the Empire, and these men were its most eminent citizens. Yet they were cowed. From their wringing hands and apologetic smiles, I gathered that they felt as uneasy about this sudden visitor as I did.

I looked at the carriage-driver. He was handsome in a glowering sort of way, in a shorter-than-regulation leather skirt, revealing long tanned legs and muscles as hard and gleaming as his shirt-amour. He was bare-headed, without wreath or helmet, his dark hair flowing, like a barbarian’s, his cloak fastened dramatically across his breast with an expensive pin. Not much like an average military carriage-driver, in fact, although from the way Felix was looking at him — like a wolf regarding a particularly succulent peacock in a pen — I guessed that the young man had been specially chosen, and singled out for additional duties.

I was wondering whether I dared now slip unobtrusively away when Felix suddenly looked towards me, raised a peremptory hand and summoned me to him.

‘You! Whatever-your-name-is! Come here.’

‘My name is Libertus, Excellence,’ I burbled, hurrying towards him as fast as I could, bobbing all the way. This was not a moment, I felt, to stress that I was a citizen by giving my three full Latin names. I need not have concerned myself. Felix was not listening.

‘You know where Marcus is?’

I nodded. In bed with his wealthy widowed lady, if he was lucky. I did not suggest this to Felix, however. ‘He had pressing business in Corinium,’ I offered humbly. That was true, after a fashion. I did not say what he was pressing.

Felix gave me his Jupiter stare again. ‘That amuses you?’

If I had been guilty of the faintest amusement it vanished instantly. ‘No, Excellence.’

‘Very well. Then you will fetch him to me.’ He must have seen my appalled look — Corinium was miles away.

I said hastily, ‘It will take some time, Excellence. It is a day’s walk.’ And another back, I thought bitterly. Even supposing that I could impress on Marcus the urgency of my errand, and persuade him to come at once.

Felix looked at me with contempt. ‘You will return with him tonight. Zetso shall take you in my carriage, as soon as I have settled in this house they promise me. It is doubtless a provincial hovel, though it belongs to one of the decurions, apparently.’

So the civic magistrates had been sufficiently awed to offer him one of their own town houses, instead of putting him in an official inn or finding him rented accommodation. It didn’t altogether surprise me, although I felt a certain pity for the unfortunate owner. He would be turned out of his house (though that was probably a blessing, with Felix in residence) with no thanks, forced to beg a room from friends or relatives, and almost certainly grumbled at for it afterwards. I couldn’t imagine a Glevum residence, however well appointed, being good enough for Felix — at least in his own estimation. There are moments when I am glad that I have only a workshop by the river with a tumbledown attic over it. At least I am not expected to vacate it for passing dignitaries from Rome.

One of the magistrates intervened nervously, almost tripping over his toga-ends in his desire to please. ‘If your most exalted Excellence will condescend. .’ He stepped forward and murmured something to Felix, who permitted himself a kind of smile.

‘Better still,’ the Roman said, addressing himself to me, ‘they are proposing a civic banquet for me this evening. Marcus may attend me there. You may tell him so.’

‘Yes, Excellence.’ I tried to disguise my dismay, imagining Marcus’s fury at such an invitation, which he could hardly refuse. That alone would have made me reluctant to go — not to mention the fact that I had a mosaic business to run, and customers of my own to see to.

I didn’t mention it. Had I been remotely tempted to do so, the sight of that battered corpse on the cobbles would have taught me discretion.

Felix followed my glance. ‘Yes,’ he said. He turned to his driver. ‘Zetso, once you have installed me in my house you had better take that’ — he gestured towards the body — ‘outside the walls and dispose of it. Stake it out somewhere, as the barbarians do — his master can find the body and bury it if he has a mind to. Always supposing that the crows have not found it first.’

I blanched. Leaving the body unburied! It was an appalling idea, even to a Celt. The Romans are usually far more superstitious in such matters, and will not even permit the burial of the decently dead within the walls of a city for fear that their spirits may return to haunt them. Felix, it seemed, feared nobody — not even the dead.

My revulsion seemed to please him, and for the first time he nodded almost affably. ‘It will be a warning. Perennis Felix is not to be trifled with.’ He smiled at the driver, a cold, unpleasant smile. ‘Nor his servants either.’

The driver’s swarthy, handsome face was a mask of carefully controlled passivity, but in spite of himself he flushed slightly, and I saw him flinch. So there was an additional reason, perhaps, for the calculated cruelty of that execution? One smile too many at the handsome Zetso, one glance too many in return? It seemed only too likely. How else would this ugly Roman keep his sexual favourite faithful?

If Zetso was to drive me to Corinium, alone, I would have to be very careful indeed.

Felix was helped back into his carriage. ‘You know the way to this house?’ he said to Zetso.

The man nodded.

‘Then, drive on!’

Zetso raised his whip and the horse lurched into life, dragging the carriage smartly towards the narrow entrance to the forum, scattering the startled crowd and sending them stumbling in all directions. Dogs barked, pigs squealed, a woman dropped her turnips as she fled. A basket of live eels was overturned on the flagstones, and the fish fell wriggling under the wheels, the body of the dead envoy dragging grotesquely among them.

‘Outside the East Gate, then, before the hour,’ Zetso called to me, over his shoulder, and then they were gone, leaving market people and magistrates staring after them.

I had no water-clock or sundial, and no way of estimating time, so I could only shrug helplessly as I picked my way among the scattered turnips. I would simply have to get to the East Gate as promptly as I could.