Requiem for a Slave

Twenty-Two

She was magnificent in grief; I must acknowledge that. No wealthy Roman matron could have been more dignified. There was no screaming or shrieking or beating of the breast; only a sudden stiffening and stillness of her form, and one long juddering painful sigh to betray how deeply the news affected her. I could see that there were glinting tears behind her eyes, but she did not let them fall, though she pressed her lips together to stop them quivering.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, sounding as helpless as I felt.

She didn’t answer, just stood there staring at her roughened hands. Then, in a tiny voice that did not seem to come from her at all, she asked, ‘What killed him?’

‘He was murdered — strangled — set on in the street.’ What else could I say? She would see him soon enough, and there was no softening the blow. ‘I have no idea who murdered him, or why.’ Then, after a moment, ‘I only know it wasn’t me, or mine.’

She dragged her gaze from somewhere centuries away and focused it on me. ‘I didn’t think it was.’ Suddenly her face was tired and old, and all the beauty had gone out of it. ‘Where is he? What have they done with him?’ she said.

‘He was dragged into my workshop, and I found him there today. We have covered him and lit some candles round his head-’

She cut me off abruptly. ‘Take me there and let me see,’ she said.

I took her the few steps to my counter and called out for Maximus. The little red-haired slave-boy was there at once, rushing to open the workshop door for me. When he saw the woman at my side, he gaped.

‘This is the turnip-seller’s wife,’ I said, and stood back to let her in. The tapers at the head and foot were both alight, I saw, and the flame on the altar was also burning bright, but there’d been no attempt to light the workshop fire, perhaps for fear of heightening the pervasive smell, of which I was now painfully aware. She must have smelt it too, because she made a little noise and clapped both hands around her nose and mouth. However, she recovered instantly and strode across to where the body was.

Junio had moved over from the window space and would have greeted her, but she scarcely looked at him. She just said bluntly, ‘May I look at him?’

I motioned to Maximus to move aside the cloak, expecting that when she saw the purpled and distorted face she would be much distressed, and as soon as she had glimpsed it, I made a sign to Maximus to cover it again. But as he moved to do so, she prevented him. She pushed back her hood, revealing a knotted plait of greying hair, and knelt beside her husband for a moment silently. Then, bending forward, she kissed that tortured brow. Only then did she rise and allow Maximus to put the birrus back.

‘I will make arrangements to have the body moved,’ she said in a voice that trembled on the brink of tears. ‘As soon as possible. Thank you for doing what you could for him.’

Maximus was unable to disguise his sheer relief at this. He actually smiled, though he recalled himself at once.

Junio hastened to ask the widow courteously, ‘Will you be able to arrange the rest yourself — find someone to provide a proper bier and herbs and everything? And what about a pyre? Our slave could assist you by running messages.’

She looked at him a moment as if he’d been speaking Greek or some other language which she didn’t understand. ‘I will arrange to have him taken home and given burial. There will be no pyre. Our family is Celtic and prefers the ancient ways. And as for the offer of your slave, there is no need for that. His brother and my son will help me bury him, and my two daughters will pick the herbs for me and help me put him in a winding sheet. We’ll lay him in the ancestral grave-site just outside the farm, where his parents and our dead babies lie — that is what he would have wanted, I am sure — and where I expect to join him, in my turn, very soon.’

There was an awkward silence. She would not welcome comfort — she was a stranger here — but it was hard to deal with shock and grief so deeply felt. I said at last, ‘Then one of us will stay here till your family comes.’

It shook her into action. She said, in the gruff and businesslike tone she had used when we first met, ‘I won’t be very long — my son came into town today to help me search for him. Well, I have found him now. I’ll send him and his uncle with a shutter board to carry him away. I’m sure my brother-in-law will find room on his cart and take it home for me.’ She pulled the hood up round her head again and made towards the door. ‘Thank you, citizens. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused to you. I will have your birrus laundered and returned to you, of course.’

She made me feel so helpless that I spread my hands. ‘If there is anything whatever that we can do for you. .’

She looked at me, the grey eyes glinting in the shadows of the hood. ‘You can find his killer, citizen. Oh, I have heard of you. You have a reputation for solving mysteries, so that even His Excellence — with all the resources at his personal command — relies on the pavement-maker for advice. Everyone in Glevum is aware of that. Perhaps that’s why the killer left the body here — simply to taunt you that you could not solve a crime left on your own doorstep, quite literally so.’ She raised her roughened hands. ‘By all the ancient gods of stone and tree, prove him wrong, citizen, and tell me who did this.’

I muttered something about trying to do that anyway, because I wanted to find out on my own account.

She shook her head. ‘Simply trying isn’t good enough. Promise you’ll succeed. Tell me who would want to kill an honest, humble man like my poor husband there, who never did a bad deed in life and never had a single enemy.’ Her voice was trembling, but with anger now, not grief. ‘You tell me who it is and I’ll go on from there. I won’t just drag him before the justices — being thrown to the beasts is far too good for him — I’ll call curses on his head that will make him writhe in this world and the next. So, if you really want to help me, citizen, that’s what you can do. Find out who the killer is and let me know his name.’

I could hardly promise that, but I reiterated that I’d do my best.

She nodded abruptly. ‘Then I look forward to your answer. Till then, good afternoon. I will send the shutter to you as soon as possible.’

She had reached the door by now. Maximus scuttled to escort her from the room, but at the threshold she turned back to me. ‘And when you find out anything, make sure you send me word. Any market stallholder will tell you where I live.’ And, this time, she was gone.

There was a startled silence. Junio looked at me. ‘Her faith in your abilities is rather touching, Father, don’t you think?’

I sat down on the corner of the workshop bench — the only place inside where there was room to perch. ‘Embarrassing, I’d call it,’ I said bitterly. ‘Of course I’d like to find out who killed the men and put their corpses here. Anyone would want to solve the mystery of a body in their shop — let alone two bodies — and no motive one can see.’ Maximus had poured a cup of mead for me, from the store that I kept underneath my workbench at the back, and — almost without thinking — I accepted it. ‘I am no further forward than I was at the start.’

The mead was cold, of course, not warm and spiced as I prefer, and it was ill luck to drink in the presence of a corpse — unless it was a funeral libation to the gods — but all the same I took a sip of it. Somehow the thick liquid seemed very comforting.

Junio, however, waved his cup away. (If it had been Roman wine, I thought, he might have taken it!) ‘You don’t suppose that Radixrapum’s wife was right, and that these murders were aimed purposely at you, just because you have a reputation in such things? Perhaps there was no real motive for the killings after all — simply that these people were on the doorstep here.’

I didn’t answer. The idea seemed preposterous to me.

But Junio was warming to his theme. ‘So it might have been significant that they were street-vendors after all, though it didn’t matter who they were or what their business was. Perhaps the strangler didn’t even know, since he attacked them from the back.’ He paused, then shook his head. ‘But, of course, it can’t be possible. No one would murder random passers-by, simply to prove that he was cleverer than you. Only a madman would do a thing like that — and these murders are too cold to be the product of a raving mind.’

But suddenly I almost choked upon my mead. ‘By Jupiter and all the gods, I do believe you’re right.’

Junio gaped at me. ‘You think that we are looking for a lunatic? Someone so crazed with self-importance that he’d do that to somebody?’ He broke off and gestured to the unfortunate body on the floor.

I shook my head, still spluttering with mead. ‘That isn’t what I meant. Dear gods, why didn’t I think of this before? Even the tanner said the murderer might have done it by mistake!’

Junio looked baffled. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Think, Junio! You suggested that the murders were aimed purposely at me. Suppose that you are right?’

Junio sat down heavily on the trestle by my side. He had turned deathly white. ‘Great Mars! You mean, the murderer thought that it was you!’ He shook his head. ‘Then it must have been someone who knew you not at all. Lucius was so ugly that you could hardly miss the fact-’

‘Not from the back, he wasn’t. He was much my height and build, and he was wearing an old tunic that I’d given him. And it seems that Radixrapum was murdered in the dark, though I don’t know what he was doing at my workshop at that hour.’

‘After he had been wheeling your pavement through the streets!’ Junio said. Almost without appearing to notice what he did, he seized the second cup of mead that Maximus had poured and drained it at a gulp. He made a face. He didn’t care for mead. ‘So anyone who glimpsed him might have thought that it was you and followed him back here. Dear Mercury! Father, it looks as if you’re right.’ He saw that I was frowning. ‘You’ve thought of something else?’

‘Only that Radixrapum left his barrow on the lane outside Pedronius’s country house. I thought that he got into a wagon with a friend, but perhaps I was mistaken. My would-be killer could not have followed someone in a cart.’

‘Your would-be killer!’ Junio echoed disbelievingly. ‘But who on earth would want to murder you? And why? I know that Marcus Septimus thinks highly of your mind, but — no disrespect, Father — you don’t have influence, or serious wealth and power. I suppose a casual robber might set on you for your purse, as we thought had happened with Lucius at first, but two planned attempts to kill you? Who would benefit?’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps the turnip-woman was right after all. It was a madman, pitting his crazed wits against your own. Besides-’

He broke off as there was a commotion at the door.

‘The stretcher already?’ I said to Maximus. ‘You’d better go and let the bearers in.’

But it was not the stretcher. It was the tanner’s wife, and her raddled face was a mask of what looked like rage and shock. She shouldered her way past Maximus and burst into the shop.

With one accord, Junio and I moved to stand between the woman and the cloaked shape upon the floor — to mask it if we could — but she did not so much as glance around the room. Even the now-pervasive smell did not seem to register. She sought me with her eyes and glared at me.

‘I might have known that you would bring trouble on our house. I told my husband so, but would he listen? Of course not, he knew best — as usual. All this lending burning embers and sending our best slave to talk to you for hours — and not even making any charge for it. Well, you won’t be talking to Glypto any more. I hope you’re satisfied.’

‘He has run away, then?’ I said stupidly. ‘I’m sorry if you think that was on my account. I think it was because of something he had seen which he thought was dangerous. He’s doubtless hiding till he thinks the threat has past. I’m sure that you will find him.’

She gave me a look that would have withered stone. ‘It was dangerous all right. And we’ve found him already. You’d better come and see.’ And, without waiting for an answer, she turned and strode outside.

Junio and I exchanged a startled glance and, leaving Maximus to keep vigil on the corpse, we meekly followed her.