Requiem for a Slave

Twenty-One

I had promised to help my son and slave with the task of affording some dignity to Radixrapum’s corpse, so I went back to do it. (I do not altogether believe in tales of vengeful ghosts haunting the place where their mortal bodies had not been shown respect, but I certainly didn’t want to take unnecessary risks.) The two of them had been busy in my absence: the floor was swept and cleaned, and they had turned the corpse over and laid it on its back. Junio had spread my birrus over it and, with Maximus’s help, he was now setting tapers at the head and feet.

Junio looked up at me as I came in. ‘What did the tanner say? You didn’t ask him for some embers to light the altar fire again? That would be useful. We could light the candles too. I know we brought some tinder, but that wouldn’t be as quick, and if you’re talking to the tanner. .’

I shook my head. ‘The message wasn’t from the tanner after all. It came from Glypto, that ancient slave of his.’

Junio got to his feet, dusting his toga down, though the floor had been sprinkled with water from the jug and his hems were not as dirty as my own had been. ‘Anything of interest? I know that he heard noises in the workshop here last night at dusk. Does he know who it was?’

‘He says he saw the green man here again.’ I frowned.

‘So that is almost certainly our strangler,’ Junio said. ‘The green man was nearby when both the victims died.’

‘Monsters?’ Maximus looked up. He was in the act of setting the taper on a spike and he almost impaled his finger in his evident alarm.

Junio laughed. ‘It’s all right, Maximus. Father doesn’t mean some creature from the underworld. It’s the just old slave’s word for somebody he saw, very close to this workshop, when Lucius was killed. The trouble is we don’t know why Glypto calls him that — it doesn’t seem that he was wearing green. We wondered if it might have been because he limed his hair.’

The little slave-boy was looking much relieved. I had forgotten that he hadn’t heard all this before — Gwellia had whisked him off to bed while I was telling Junio the tale last night.

‘So the message was really that the murderer was here? But we already knew that, because we found the corpse. I wonder why it was so urgent to tell you, in that case.’

‘But Glypto couldn’t have known that,’ I reminded him. ‘He hadn’t seen the body of the turnip-man.’

‘The tanner did, though,’ Junio put in. ‘Do you think, in spite of everything, he might have told his slave?’

‘I doubt it very much, but we can soon find out. We’ll act on your suggestion. Get the empty brazier, Maximus, and go next door and ask the tanner for some coals.’

‘But don’t you want to talk to Glypto?’ Junio enquired.

‘Certainly I do, but since it’s obvious I have a slave with me, it would look remarkable for me to go myself. If Glypto is not able to meet me at the pile — as, from his message, I presume he won’t — it will give the tanner an excuse to send him over here, without his wife suspecting anything. In the meantime, I will go outside and see if by any chance I’m wrong and Glypto has somehow contrived to get away.’

‘Let’s hope he has done,’ Junio said to me as Maximus scuttled to obey. ‘You will learn a lot more from him on his own, though the coals will be useful in any case, of course. In the meantime, I am to stay here and guard the corpse?’

‘If the stallholder should come while I’m away, try not to let him in. You know what to tell him. I want to trace where Radixrapum lives, so I can send and tell his family what’s befallen him.’ I looked at the unhappy bundle on the floor. ‘I shall be lucky if they don’t suppose I murdered him myself. I’m fortunate that the tanner is so inquisitive — otherwise I would have no witness that the man was dead when I got here today, and that there was no corpse here last evening when I left.’ I left him to it, hoping to find Glypto waiting at the pile.

Despite the drenching drizzle, it was a relief to be outside, away from the increasingly sick-sweet smell of death and the silent reproach of Radixrapum’s corpse. I paused for a moment to retrieve my cloak, happy to be breathing the fresh air again. I glanced towards the tanner’s house, expecting to see the small form of Maximus, but the gate was still ajar and there was no sign of anyone. Indeed, the whole street was deserted now — all the normal passers-by had taken shelter from the rain — so I wrapped my cloak around myself and set off squelching down the little alleyway in the direction of the midden-pile.

But the alleyway was empty; you could see that at a glance. Only the raindrops splashing on the pile and washing little eddies of filth towards my feet, and a pair of drenched and starving dogs, fighting over something on the far side of the heap. There was no Glypto anywhere in sight.

The dogs had stopped at my approach to snarl ferociously at me, baring their yellowing teeth in a distinctly threatening way, and I had no wish to tangle with their jaws. I left them to their unspeakable supper and beat a swift retreat back into the more salubrious surroundings of the street. As I emerged, I saw Maximus come out on to the road — accompanied by the tanner — through the open gate next door. The page was carrying the brazier of embers, I was glad to see.

The tanner saw me and came hurrying across. He too was wrapped in a heavy cloak from head to foot against the rain, and he peered closely at me from underneath the hood, each of his boss-eyes glinting with concern. ‘Citizen Libertus, I thought that it was you. What have you done with Glypto? My wife is very cross.’

‘But-’ I was beginning to protest, but he waved the words aside.

‘The daft old fool has let the fire go out, he’s been away so long, and the whole of the mixture must be done again, she says. She’s blaming me, of course. Says I should never have agreed to let him talk to you at all.’

‘But-’ I said again.

‘Well, I didn’t mean to tell her, but you know what she’s like. She wormed it out of me that I’d agreed that he could come — though I didn’t tell her about the corpse, of course — and my life won’t be worth living if he’s not back at once. She’s threatening to leave and take her dowry too. I don’t care how important his information is, you’ll have to send him home.’

‘But I haven’t seen him,’ I said, when he paused and allowed me — at last — to get the sentence out. ‘I came out to find him, but he wasn’t at the pile. See for yourself.’ I gestured down the alley-gap.

He stared in that direction, but there was clearly no one there. Even the dogs were silent, gnawing at whatever stinking thing they had found among the heap. The tanner threw a baleful look at me.

‘And he isn’t in your workshop?’ he said suspiciously.

I shook my head. ‘Why, in that case, would I be out here in the rain, looking for him?’ I demanded.

The tanner looked non-plussed, biting his lip with his remaining tooth. ‘Well, if you haven’t got him, where in Dis has the old fool got to? He wouldn’t run away.’ The eye in my direction glared at me. ‘Unless he’d heard about the murders taking place next door. He did see the army take away a corpse. That might have frightened him, I suppose.’

I frowned. ‘There may be something in that,’ I conceded thoughtfully, to my neighbour’s evident surprise. ‘He did send a message to me a little while ago — not personally but by a messenger — to say that he had seen the green man here again. That might account for why he isn’t here.’

The tanner boggled. ‘You don’t believe that tale?’ He gulped. ‘Though they do say that corpses from the underworld turn green-skinned as they rot. You don’t think-’

He broke off as Maximus gave a yelp and dropped the brazier on the ground, spilling half the contents in the miry damp.

‘Absolutely not,’ I said severely. ‘If Glypto had seen a walking corpse, or any kind of ghost, he would have told us so — in graphic terms, no doubt. He simply said ‘a man’ and I’m sure that’s what he meant. He even heard him speak — quite normally, it seems.’ I turned to Maximus, who was still whiter than the toga of a candidate, and said as matter-of-factly as I could, ‘Maximus, pick that brazier up and take it to the shop, and light the candles while that ember is alight. Don’t stop to pick up the others that you dropped, just take the one you have. Hurry up or this rain will put that out as well.’

The little slave looked up at me and nodded thankfully. He picked up the brazier and trotted off with it.

‘And you’d better light the fire on the altar too, while you are about it,’ the tanner called out after him. He turned to me apologetically. ‘You can’t be too careful when spirits are about. And I’m worried about Glypto. Where do you think he’s gone?’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘Taken shelter somewhere, if he’s got any sense. And we should do the same — he clearly isn’t here.’ I turned as if to go.

‘Wait just a minute, citizen!’ The tanner tugged my cape, which was distinctly damp by now, and made it impossible for me to move away. ‘Didn’t I hear that you had lost a slave yourself? I’m sure I heard you telling Glypto so the other day — I was just inside the gate and I couldn’t help but hear. It’s true. I see it in your face. Oh, great Dis,’ he added in his strange rasping tone, ‘do you think some madman is creeping round the streets, murdering tradesmen and kidnapping the slaves?’

‘My slave has been arrested,’ I said unwillingly. ‘By Quintus’s decree. I don’t think the green man had any part in it. Though I do think it’s possible that he is the murderer — though I don’t know who he is, and I can’t imagine why he’d want to kill those men. And as for why he wanted to leave the corpses in my shop. .’

‘Who knows? Perhaps he did it by mistake.’ My neighbour clearly had no interest in discussing my affairs. He was still holding me firmly by my cape and he shook it with both hands as he said urgently, ‘But Glypto heard the green man talking. You said as much yourself. Suppose that Glypto heard him speak again — last night, in your workshop — and recognized the voice?’

I could not counter this; I’d thought as much myself.

‘Suppose it was the green man, and Glypto knows it was?’ the tanner babbled on. ‘You think that might frighten him enough to run away?’ He paused, the raindrops dripping from his hood.

I shook my head. ‘In that case, surely, he’d have done it earlier. I saw him at the midden-pile a little while ago.’

The tanner looked doubtful. ‘I suppose he would have had the opportunity. He must have been out there a dozen times today.’ His grip was slackening.

‘Exactly.’ I extricated myself gently from his grasp. ‘Whereas, if he was feeling under threat, surely you’d expect him to try and stay inside — not seize every opportunity to go into the street. Yet he sent me that message not half an hour ago, because he hadn’t managed to speak to me alone and didn’t think he could contrive to get outside again.’ I looked at him. ‘You’re sure he hasn’t had an accident indoors? Fallen into one of your tanning vats, for instance?’

‘Dear Mercury! I hadn’t thought of that,’ the tanner said. ‘Or he might have hidden in a rack of skins. I’ll go and have a look. And if you see him, for the love of Jove, send him home before my wife walks out on me, or there’ll be another murder — in the tannery this time.’ And he was gone before I even had time to answer him.

I turned back, rather damply, towards the workshop door and was about to push it open and walk into the dry when a brusque voice from the corner of the street prevented me. ‘You the pavement-maker, are you?’

I looked up to see the speaker bearing down on me. It was not, as I had first supposed, a man, but a strapping woman in a full-length woven cloak. Her burly form was shapeless as a sack, her hands enormous and her feet — set on solid ankles — looked as large as mine and were encased in a stout pair of boots with wooden soles. Her hood was pulled up firmly around her head and it concealed her hair, but as she strode towards me I could see her face: round, wrinkled and weatherworn, with shrewdly bright grey eyes. I realized that this woman had been lovely once.

‘I am Libertus, the mosaicist. You wanted me?’ I said.

‘On the contrary. I heard you wanted me. Something about my husband, as I understand. I gather you have news of where he is — well, I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been worried sick. Stayed up waiting for him half the night, with his dinner burning on the fire, and when he hadn’t come this morning, I came to town myself. What has he done now? Got himself arrested or something, I suppose? Has he done something to offend the market police?’

I shut my eyes in horror. I had not expected this. It was no surprise that Radixrapum had a wife — it is next to impossible for a man to tend a field and sell his produce in the market without a family — and I knew that his death would be a fearful blow to her. But I had not for a moment envisaged meeting her and having to tell her the dreadful news myself. What made it worse was that, despite their differences in looks, this woman’s practical good sense and clear intelligence fiercely reminded me of my own dear Gwellia.

‘Come, pavement-maker,’ she was saying, ‘don’t prevaricate. I know that you have news. I was talking to my husband’s brother in the marketplace. He has a stall there, near the forum, and he often gave Radix a lift home on his cart when he had sold his turnips. So I was in the act of asking if he had any news when an urchin-child turned up and said you wanted him — my brother-in-law, that is. You had unhappy information about my husband, he explained, and were intending to send word to me, so naturally I got directions and hurried here myself.’

‘And what happened to the messenger? I owe him something for his services.’ I forced myself to look her in the face.

‘I paid the boy what you had promised him,’ she said with dignity. ‘Two sesterces. I would have paid twice that to learn where Radix is.’

I mentally acknowledged the urchin for his ingenuity. It was a great deal more than I had undertaken for, of course, but I did not tell her that. This poor woman had sufficient woes. ‘I fear you will not think so, when you hear the truth.’

The grey eyes clouded. ‘Not the prison, then? I feared that the aediles might have marched him off, for giving short-weight coin or something of the kind. It has been known before when someone passed it off on him. But it is more than that — I see it in your face. There’s been an accident? Or worse — someone has attacked him and he is lying hurt? I know there are rumours of rebel bandits in the southern woods.’ Her eyes still searched my face. ‘Dear Jove! Worse still? Don’t tell me he is dead!’

I knew that I was witnessing the death of hope. I saw it written in those troubling grey eyes.

I shall not forget, until I die, the dawning pain in them as I said, as gently as I could, ‘I wish that I could tell you otherwise.’