Requiem for a Slave

Fourteen

It seemed to take an unconscionably long time for the last guest to leave — and that was actually the priest of Mars himself, who seemed peculiarly reluctant to depart as long as a morsel of roast lamb or wine remained. No wonder he was such a portly man. But at last we got him bundled to the gate and into the hiring-litter which he had arranged — and which, it transpired, had been waiting quite a time — and with cries of ‘Don’t forget to tell your patron, citizens’, he lurched off down the lane.

I turned to Junio, who was standing at my side. ‘Now, perhaps, we can set off into town ourselves. If you are still willing to accompany me, that is.’

He gave me the old familiar grin. ‘Of course. I am as anxious as you are to find news of Minimus. And even if we do not succeed in doing that, I can at least help you finish the Apollo piece today. I know that you are anxious to be paid for that.’

‘Especially after that expensive feast,’ I teased. But it was not entirely a joke. Even with this payment from Pedronius, money — or rather the lack of it — would be a problem soon. I had been relying on the Quintus contract for a handsome fee and had actually turned down several small commissions on the strength of it. The earnings from the Apollo piece would help to see me through, but I was glad to know my patron was returning very soon. Marcus might be very careful with his own expenditure, but he had enough influence with other purchasers to ensure that my household did not starve, however much ill omen was attaching to my shop.

Junio was laughing at my sally, though. ‘At least we shall not require to be fed before we leave! Let us go and tell the women what we plan.’ He led the way into his house again.

Cilla was sitting on a stool beside the central hearth, looking exhausted after the excitements of the day, but flushed with a triumphant pleasure too. Gwellia, assisted by the villa slaves, was busy collecting bowls and spoons to wash in the water that Kurso was no doubt collecting from the spring. Amato — the centre of all this activity — was back in his sleeping hammock, dreaming peacefully.

I looked at Junio.

‘That was a successful ritual, I think,’ he said. ‘But now. .’

‘You are going to go and look for Minimus, I hope,’ my wife replied. ‘Take Maximus to help you. We can manage here. With the slaves from the villa, we have a lot more hands to help than we would have done if Minimus was here. So you go and find him, and good luck to you. Kurso, where’s that water?’ And she plunged her hands into a metal bowl and set to work to scrub it with a handful of rough sand.

We took this as a signal to depart. We did not change out of our togas — we would get more respect from sentries and people as we were, and we could soak down to our tunics if we went to the villa to strip the linen off the plaque. However, we did pause to seize a cloak and staff apiece, and I took a few sesterces from the household store so that I could settle with Radixrapum when he came. Then Junio and I set out to walk to town, with Maximus trotting after us with my box of tools and the spare birrus which Kurso had worn home.

It is a long walk, even in daylight, and — though of course I do not often travel at this time of day — the old track through the woods seemed unnaturally empty. Yet the forest was full of disturbing rustling sounds and a distant howling which might have been a dog or wolf, but — to my over-anxious ears — could have been a rebel signal from somewhere in the trees. Moreover, for a long time we scarcely saw a soul: only a farmer with a panniered donkey lumbering along, who moved grumblingly aside to let us pass. Of course, there were three of us and we were armed with staves, but I could not keep the thought of brigands from my mind.

So when I heard the sound of hoof-beats following, my heart began to pound. I glanced at Junio and saw that his face was set and tense, and — though neither of us voiced our fears in front of Maximus — I knew he shared my thoughts. This section of the lane route is muddy and particularly steep, and it is rare to find a horseman who will choose to come this way at all. But the hoof-beats were coming closer and ever closer still, until they slowed and seemed to follow us.

I stole a furtive glance and saw a hooded figure on a horse.

He came up beside us, reined his mount and stopped.

‘On your way to Glevum, citizen?’ the rider said, and I recognized the cultured tones of Virilis. He was smiling down at me with that over-charming smile that my wife had found so irresistible. ‘I would have offered to take you if you had been alone — I’m sure that my horse could have accommodated us both.’

I thanked him as politely as I could, in a voice still weak with shock. ‘But I have not been on a horse at all for many years and certainly never riding pillion.’ It was true. I would never have considered such an offer anyway — particularly from an over-pampered pet like him.

He laughed. ‘Then perhaps it’s just as well. It would not in any case have been a comfortable ride — this route is much more steep and winding than I had supposed. No wonder so few horsemen seem to come this way.’ He paused. ‘Well, if you’re sure there’s nothing I can do? Your patron would expect me to help you if I could. Perhaps I could take that box for you, at least,’ he went on with a smile. ‘It is heavy for your slave. I could easily leave it at your workshop later on — I have to pass that way in any case.’

I was obscurely irritated by this suggestion too. ‘Thank you, but I shall require it later on. Maximus can manage very easily,’ I said ungraciously, trying to ignore the disappointed look that crossed the page’s face.

‘Then I will not delay you. I have many calls to make. Arrangements for your patron when he gets back,’ he said. ‘Quintus Severus is planning an enormous feast, and half the population of Glevum will be there. And there is a special meeting of the curia today. There has been a change of plan. I am to ride and tell His Excellence the result. I will give him your greetings and your latest news. Give my respects to both your charming wives.’ He doffed his feathered hat and cantered off again.

‘The latest news,’ I muttered, as Virilis disappeared from sight. ‘Including the fact that I’ve lost Minimus, no doubt.’ The encounter had not pleased me very much and I trudged on with a frown. Maximus, I noticed, was doing much the same.

Junio, perhaps in an attempt to lift the mood, said very earnestly, ‘Then we must find Minimus as quickly as we can. Or news of him at least.’

‘That may not be possible,’ I muttered gloomily.

‘Then it is doubly important that you find out what you can. If you can prove the rebels have him, Marcus himself will see that they are caught and punished as severely as the law allows. So let’s go over everything you know — up to the moment when he disappeared.’

‘Again? I told you yesterday.’

‘There may be some detail which you did not realize was important at the time, but which you remember when you tell the tale again. Isn’t that what you always say when you are asking questions of witnesses yourself, Father?’

He was right, of course. There was not much to tell him, but I did my best. ‘He simply wasn’t there when I returned,’ I finished.

Junio frowned. ‘But he was clearly still there after you had gone. He was seen by the turnip-man sitting on his stool by the workshop counter, awaiting customers?’

‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘And I haven’t found anyone who saw him leave his post. Though he went in a hurry: he’d left his knuckle-bones.’

‘Excuse me, masters, but he wouldn’t have done that if he could have helped it,’ Maximus’s voice piped up from the rear. I had forgotten that he was listening to all this. ‘It took him months of haggling with the kitchen slaves to get a perfect set — he could not go out to the butcher’s stall, of course, to find them for himself. He was very proud of them. They were almost the only objects that he really owned.’

Junio, who had been a child-slave himself, looked rather grim at this. ‘So he would not have left them willingly?’

‘Not unless there was some crisis and he was called away. He would have put his duty even before his knuckle-bones,’ Maximus replied, then added wistfully, ‘At least I think he would.’

‘Which brings us back to the attack on Lucius, and the message yesterday,’ I said. The lane was considerably steeper here and I was rather out of breath. I took the opportunity to take a little rest, by pausing to add thoughtfully, ‘And the idea that Minimus witnessed the assault and sent the messenger, thinking that it was me that was attacked? But why on earth should he have thought that it was me?’

‘We’ve been through this before. Lucius was wearing your old tunic at the time, and from the back he might have looked like you.’

‘Only at a considerable distance,’ I replied. ‘And why would Minimus have left the shop in any case, unless somebody forced him?’

‘Which is exactly where we started,’ Junio said, walking briskly on again. ‘Perhaps we should try to find the urchin who brought the message to the house. At the very least he could tell us who sent him. I suppose it is possible that we could find him in the streets.’

‘But we don’t know what he looks like,’ I objected, toiling uphill after him. ‘None of us was actually at the roundhouse when he came.’

‘So we’ll have to ask around. There are always gaggles of pauper children who hang around the town, hoping to make an as or two by carrying people’s purchases or taking messages. More than likely he was one of them. We could make enquiries,’ Junio went on. ‘Even if he wasn’t, they might know who he was and be glad to earn a quadrans by finding him for us. It was a longish errand. No doubt it was the subject of gossip yesterday.’

I nodded. ‘Someone must have paid the urchin fairly handsomely or promised him more coin when he returned. Otherwise he would not have come so far or run so fast,’ I muttered breathlessly, thinking of my own attempt to send a messenger to Gwellia the day before, when a quadrans apparently had not been enough. ‘And that would hardly have been Minimus, whatever Cilla thinks. He would not have had the wherewithal.’

‘But the boy was promised payment on delivery,’ Junio pointed out. ‘That would make a kind of sense.’

‘But if Minimus had sent him,’ I said, gloomily determined to support the other view, ‘why didn’t the messenger say so at the time?’

‘The women thought he did,’ my son reminded me. ‘I only wish our wives had thought to ask a little more. I suppose that they were so concerned about your safety that they thought of nothing else but getting to Glevum as quickly as they could. Speaking of which, here we are ourselves.’

We had turned the final corner as he spoke, and the southern gatehouse was indeed in view. As if by common instinct, we all increased our pace.

‘You talk to the sentry, father, and I’ll go over there and see if those loitering urchins have anything to tell,’ Junio said briskly. ‘We’ll meet inside the gate — or I’ll see you at the workshop if anything turns up and I have to go and find the messenger.’

I nodded. ‘Send Maximus if there’s anything to report.’ I strode off in the direction of the guard.

He was standing stock-still at his post, idly watching people entering the town — looking out for beggars and known fugitives, I suppose — and he scarcely glanced at me as I approached the gate. He was a surly-looking fellow, with a barrel-chest and a general appearance of being bored and hot in his heavy helmet and metal uniform. So it was with some trepidation and a feeble smile that — instead of passing meekly through the arch and scuttling away, like the woman ahead of me with the basket of gathered watercress — I went up to him.

‘Excuse me, sentry-man.’

He turned and looked me slowly up and down. I was still wearing my toga from the morning’s feast, which marked me as a Roman citizen, but his inspection clearly left him unimpressed. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

The brusqueness took my surprise. ‘Well, it’s like this,’ I said, so non-plussed that I was almost gabbling. ‘I have lost a slave — a small red-headed lad. I think he has been stolen and I want to know if anyone was seen yesterday dragging him away, or if there’s been a slave-trader through here who might have had a boy of that description chained among his wares.’

I waited for an answer but all he said was ‘Hmmmph!’ He was still looking at me with something like contempt, and I added swiftly, ‘The slave concerned did not belong to me but to my patron, Marcus Septimus.’

The mention of my patron had one effect at least. The square face creased in an unpleasant smile. ‘Then I’m glad that I‘m not standing in your sandals, citizen. But I cannot help you. I have seen nothing since I came on watch.’ He said this with a certain gleefulness, but at any rate I had prompted him to speech. Indeed, he added a moment afterwards, ‘But if you are looking for a small red-haired page, I suppose the one behind you is not the one you mean?’

I whirled round with sudden foolish hope, but, of course, it was only little Maximus waiting patiently at a distance for me to notice him.

I indicated that he had permission to approach. ‘The young master says to tell you that it was not one of them,’ the slave-boy said, giving me a conspiratorial smile to show he was being deliberately oblique. ‘But there is a girl who thinks she might know who it was — she heard him talking earlier about the long walk he’d had. She’s going to take us to him. The young master says he’ll meet you at the workshop later on.’

I nodded, and he trotted off again, obviously enjoying the sentry’s bafflement.

I turned back to the guard and was about to say, with what dignity I could, that the missing slave had been acquired to be a matching pair with this when a voice from the gatehouse hailed me heartily.

‘Pavement-maker, I want a word with you!’

I looked up in alarm and recognized the soldier with the swagger stick that I’d seen the day before, when he had been commanding the party with the cart — the one I’d nicknamed ‘Scowler’. He was scowling now and hastening towards us with a determined air. The guard took a step backwards and pulled himself upright, standing to attention as if he feared rebuke.

But Scowler showed no interest in the guard at all. As he approached, he seized me by the arm. I thought that he was arresting me on some trumped-up charge and was about to make a protest, but he hustled me away to one side of the arch. I saw that he was no longer wearing his habitual frown. Indeed, he was giving me a most peculiar smile.

‘If you’ve come here enquiring about that page again — the one that you were mentioning to me yesterday,’ he said, murmuring as if he didn’t wish the other man to overhear, ‘I might have information that would be of use to you. Did I understand that there might be a reward?’