Requiem for a Slave

Fifteen

‘You know where he is?’ Hope was bubbling like a fountain in my veins. ‘Wait till I tell my son. If you can take us to him, I’ll reward you willingly.’ I glanced around to speak to Junio, but there was no sign of him. He and his urchin guide had already disappeared.

Scowler was tapping his swagger stick against his side. ‘Now, wait a minute, citizen. I didn’t say that I could take you to him, or even that I know exactly where he is, but I do know what happened to him yesterday. That is what I’m offering — if you feel that is something which it is worth your while to know.’ He ran a thick tongue around his lips. ‘Though it’s an official matter — privileged intelligence — and perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you at all.’

He was clearly hoping for a substantial bribe, and my store of money was depleting by the day. However, I did want information about Minimus and would gladly pay for news, though the chances were that it was anything but good. The circumstances in which the death-cart officer was likely to have seen the boy did not bear thinking of, but I decided that, even so, I would be glad to know the truth.

I swallowed. ‘I’ll give you a denarius,’ I said. ‘Half now and another half if what you say leads to my finding him.’ Or at least his body, I added grimly to myself.

Scowler gave me a wily glance and shook his head. ‘I thought that you were anxious to have news of him? This information is worth more than that. Ten denarii at the very least.’

The demand was audacious and deliberately so. It was also more money than I could possibly afford and far more than I was carrying. Perhaps that was what made me stand my ground. ‘Then I’ll try elsewhere. If you’re in possession of this news, then others in the garrison will have heard of it. I’ll call on the commander — he knows who I am, and since this is my patron’s slave, I’m sure he’ll try to help.’

In fact, I was by no means confident of that: on our previous encounters, there had always been the safety of a Roman citizen at stake, and a citizen of some authority at that. The fate of a humble slave-boy was of no account and therefore most unlikely even to have reached his ears. However, I moved away towards the gate again as if I intended to go to him at once.

Scowler’s capitulation was so abrupt that it took me by surprise. He skirted round in front of me so as to block my path. ‘Now just a minute, pavement-maker. Let’s not be hasty here. I’m sure some accommodation can be reached.’

I raised my hand in a dismissive gesture of farewell, but he was too quick for me. He leaned forward and slapped my palm with his, the age-old signal of a bargain struck. ‘A denarius, I believe you offered earlier. On consideration, I formally accept. Spondeo. There! We have a binding contract citizen, I think.’

Of course, it was really nothing of the kind. True, a stipulatio made in front of witnesses is generally taken to be binding by the market police, but only when the whole traditional formula is used, and Scowler had merely uttered the last response of it. Moreover, I now suspected that I’d promised far too much and he would have settled for a good deal less.

However, several people had seen him strike my hand (including the sentry at the gate, who was very unlikely to contradict a higher-ranking man) and I should have found it difficult to prove my case. Besides, my real concern was to gain news of Minimus, so I let it pass — as, no doubt, he had anticipated that I would. First skirmish to Scowler, I thought sourly.

I rallied by saying as loudly as I could, ‘The first half when you tell me what you know; the second if it leads to my locating him.’ As I had intended, people turned to look, so the terms of the so-called contract were at least made known.

Scowler, however, seemed alarmed by this and pulled me back into the shadow of an arch. ‘Very well, but don’t let people know that you heard this from me.’ He had dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘He’s in custody. I told you there was a warrant out for his arrest. When I got back here to the garrison last night, I heard that someone had already pulled him in, so the rest of us didn’t have to keep a lookout any more.’

‘In custody!’ It was ridiculous, but my first emotion was relief. Minimus might be chained up in a military cell — cold, terrified and hungry, and doubtless beaten too — but at least he wasn’t dead or being held to ransom by some vindictive rebel band. If he was in the clutches of the law, there were at any rate established procedures I could try.

‘So they are holding him in the garrison?’ I glanced across at the grim grey building as I spoke. This altered everything. It would not be easy to get him out of there — especially since Quintus had ordered his arrest — but the garrison commander was a friend of Marcus, and (as I’d told the sentry) I had dealt with him before and knew him to be a stern but not unkindly man. If Minimus was a prisoner under his command, then I could work, if not to obtain an actual release, then at least to improve the lad’s conditions till my patron came.

But Scowler shook his head. ‘He wasn’t brought here to the garrison. The word is he was captured by someone’s private guard. And when I say a guard, I mean a gang of them — half a dozen heavyweights, from what I understand. Must be someone wealthy to have a guard like that.’

I closed my eyes. I knew who it would be. Quintus had put the warrant out himself, though I was surprised to learn that Minimus had been caught without Hyperius mentioning it at the naming day. All the same, it was important news. I would have to go and visit Quintus now and try to persuade him that he should drop the charge. In the meantime. .

‘Do you know where they have taken him? The town jail, perhaps?’ If so, he would be having an unpleasant time. Without the money to send out for food and drink, the best he could hope for was foul water and stale bread. I could imagine it with dreadful clarity — I had once been held in such a place myself: chained up hand and foot in a subterranean dungeon, dank and airless and wholly in the dark, and forced to lap food and water like a dog, from a communal bowl. There was a good chance that, with a little judicial bribery, I could at least arrange for him to have a better cell.

‘I don’t know where they would have taken him,’ Scowler said. He seemed to be making a habit of repressing any ray of hope. ‘But it wasn’t to the jail, or I would have heard. We had a dead body to pick up from there today.’

I waved aside this incidental human tragedy. ‘But I understand that there’s a serious accusation on his head, so he’ll be brought to trial. Where else would they hold him?’

He frowned with concentration, anxious to earn that second half-denarius. ‘I suppose it’s possible they’ve locked him up themselves. If they produce him for the hearing, that is all that is required.’ He brightened. ‘That would make a lot of sense, supposing there is somewhere they can keep him safe till then. And I expect there is — a man who keeps a private guard like that won’t be short of a denarius or two.’

I nodded grimly. ‘What decurion is? It is a requirement that a man has a certain value of estate before he is available to be elected to the post.’

‘You know whose guard it was, then?’ Scowler looked surprised. ‘No one seemed to know.’

‘The decurion who put the warrant out, I’m sure.’

‘The one who arranged for us to come and get the corpse from you?’ He sounded diffident. ‘Well, I know where you can find him, if that’s so. He’ll be at the curia, or on his way to it. The ordo has a special session there this afternoon, and I think I heard the bugle just before you came.’

I nodded. ‘Then he will be on his way to the basilica by now. If I miss him there, I’ll try his town apartment later on. I know where that is too.’

Though it would not be easy to persuade him to set Minimus free, I thought. Quintus had a stubborn streak and hated to be wrong, and he’d decided yesterday that the slave-boy was guilty — if not actually of killing Lucius, then at least of stealing his purse and running off with it. No doubt his accusation would carry weight in court. The only way to change his mind would be to find the murderer. And very soon at that.

A chief decurion would have no trouble arranging for a trial, especially when it did not require a proper magistrate. In fact, it might not even require a proper court. For the likes of Minimus, a hearing was often conducted out of doors, in an open courtyard with someone unimportant presiding over it — and where an acclamation by the lookers-on would be enough to seal the poor lad’s fate. Unless, of course, the official torturers had already been to work and extorted a confession, as they sometimes did. That picture was so dreadful that I dragged my mind away.

‘You say he was arrested some time yesterday?’ I said, already making calculations in my mind. ‘When did you hear of it?’

Scowler pushed his helmet up and scratched his grizzled head. ‘When I came off duty, about mid-afternoon I suppose it must have been. I tried to tell you then — you seemed to be so anxious to find out where he was that I knew you’d make it worth my while. So I went back to your shop, but I couldn’t find you there, so then I tried to keep a lookout at the gate — I heard you generally pass this way — but there was still no sign of you, until just now, that is.’

I shook my head. ‘Last night I didn’t come this way at all.’ Which was a pity — I could have saved myself a lot of worry if I had. I turned to Scowler and fished beneath my toga folds into the draw-purse which I carried at my belt. ‘Here’s the half-denarius I promised you.’ I scarcely had a chance to hold it out to him before he’d seized it from me and put it in the arm pouch under his tunic sleeve. He clearly didn’t want the sentry — or anyone else — to see.

‘And the other half?’ he muttered. ‘When do I get that?’

‘When I have located him. And if I find that there is something more that you could have told me now, I shall withhold the money. Do you understand?’

Scowler’s frown came down upon him like a cloud, but his tone was wheedling. ‘Would I cheat you, citizen?’ he said.

I rather thought he might do, if he had the chance, but I didn’t say as much. Instead, I attempted to look businesslike. ‘Then I shall see you here this evening about the time the sun goes down. If I have found out where he is, you’ll have your coin.’

He was still staring after me as I walked through the gate and made my way towards the centre of the town. thinking of what I would say to Quintus when we met.

On reflection, I did not believe that he would let the slave be harmed — not at least while in his custody: he was too aware of who the legal owner was. That was some comfort to me. But equally I did not think that he would let him go. It seemed he genuinely believed in Minimus’s guilt — otherwise, why bring the charge at all? But perhaps he would not hasten to a trial. Why take the boy into private custody unless he intended to delay? Or did he, on the contrary, intend to rush it through: to demonstrate to Marcus that I’d been negligent, firstly by not keeping an adequate watch upon the boy and then by encouraging him to independent thought?

Indeed, I realized suddenly, I might find myself arraigned — diminishing the quality of someone else’s slave, physically or morally, was a criminal offence, tantamount to damaging his goods. That was not a comfortable possibility, and it made it still more urgent that I found the truth.

I was hurrying towards the forum all this time, down the wide thoroughfare that led into the centre of the town, still debating whether I should call at the curia at once, or if it was too late and I would have to intercept Quintus later on at home, at the apartment which he kept up in the town. (Like every other office-holder in the curia, he was obliged to maintain a property of a certain size within the walls, although, in common with Marcus and most other wealthy men, he owned a villa in the country too.) Surely he would already be at the basilica by now.

I hurried in that direction all the same, past the serried ranks of statues on their plinths and avoiding the traders who stepped out in my path and tried to interest me in what they had for sale — everything from woven carpets and expensive samian bowls to buckets of live eels — piled up on the makeshift stalls that crammed the pavement and spilled out on the street. I was side-stepping a particularly persistent shoe-seller, who would not believe that I did not want a pair of sandals made for me today, when a quartet of litter-bearers jogged past at that semi-run they often use in town. They were carrying a particularly fancy equipage with embroidered curtains that I recognized at once. This was the litter of Quintus Severus and, as I could make out through the half-drawn draperies, he was himself the only passenger, and he did not seem to be accompanied by Hyperius this time.

That sharpened my endeavours. I disengaged myself abruptly from the sandal-man, stepped over a neighbouring display of leather belts, narrowly avoided upsetting the ink of an amanuensis writing letters for a client, and pushed into the road. But I was impeded by my Roman dress (a toga is not an easy thing to hurry in), while the bearers wore short tunics to leave their long legs free. Besides they were strong and youthful men, accustomed to their trade, so by the time I had struggled to the carriageway the litter was already a long way down the street.

I don’t know if you have ever tried to break into a run wearing a toga, but if you have, you’ll know that it is near impossible. The garment instantly unfolds itself and loops around your knees. There was nothing for it. I could not remove my toga in a public place, so I did the next best thing: stripped off my cloak, wound it into a sort of tourniquet around my hips, then pulled up my errant toga loops and stuffed them into it. At least, that way, my hairy legs were free. Thus, cutting a most undignified figure, and to the accompaniment of hoots and catcalls from the onlookers, I roused myself into a lumbering trot and set off in pursuit.