Requiem for a Slave

Four

The tanner was a small, squat, swarthy man, with bandy legs and eyes that were noticeably crossed. His face was lined and so raddled with the fumes that it had become the colour of his hides, and he rejoiced in the possession of a single tooth. It was impossible to guess what sort of age he was — he looked fully fifty or sixty years of age, but he had looked much the same when I first moved into the shop and that was now some fifteen years ago. Perhaps his tanning had preserved him too.

I could see him through the open gate as I pulled the rope to ring the bell. He was arranging finished skins into a pile and selecting the best ones to hang up on display in a dingy little area which served as a front court. He came towards me, grinning — if, with one tooth, it could be called a grin.

We knew each other slightly. In the days when, like him, I had lived above the shop, he had called round several times seeking an arrangement to collect my urine pots, so he could mix the contents with various leaves and herbs for a concoction which helped loosen the hair from stubborn hides. However, I already had a contract with the fullers-shop nearby, and nothing came of it. This was the first time that I had called on him.

He was still baring his gums at me, in what was obviously intended to be a friendly smile. ‘Citizen Libertus.’ His voice was mumbling and cracked, though I have heard him raise it in anger many times when one of his workers’ efforts failed to please. ‘To what do we owe the honour of a visit? Do you wish to purchase hides? Or a piece of goatskin — I’ve got some nice ones here. For a blanket, or a pair of shoes for your good wife, perhaps?’ He gestured to the hides that he’d been stacking earlier.

I was tempted to tell him the whole story but rejected the idea. Unlike the turnip-seller, my neighbour loved to talk, and I knew he had dealings with the wealthy in the town, including the customer for the Apollo piece. I thought of asking if I could borrow a handcart for an hour but rejected that as well — he would be bound to ask questions as to why I wanted it. So I simply shook my head and jerked my chin towards the oil lamp and the bowl. ‘I am not bringing business, neighbour, I’m afraid. I come requesting coals. A flame for the oil lamp and some glowing embers to get the fire alight. There’s nothing in the workshop that I can light them with.’

He focused both eyes vaguely on my face. ‘Not even your Vestal flame alight? And you a Roman citizen?’ he said.

It was true that there was a little altar-niche on my premises, dedicated to the goddess of the hearth — no doubt he had seen it when he came to call — but it dated from the time the little shop was built, in the previous owner’s time. Even when the upper storey had been a sleeping space, I never lit a sacrificial flame on it except on occasions like public holy days or the feast day of the Emperor, when such observances were generally required.

I had made no answer, and he took that as assent. ‘That was careless, neighbour.’ He raised his thinning eyebrows in a knowing arch. ‘Too busy talking to that fine customer of yours? I saw the expensive-looking litter at your door. And wasn’t it the chief decurion getting out of it? I sold him an ox-skin once. I hope he gave you a nice contract and made it all worthwhile?’

‘I lost the work, in fact.’

He made a little grimace of sympathy. ‘I’m sorry to hear that, citizen. Someone came in with a lower estimate, I suppose. They’re all the same, these very wealthy men. Quibble about a quadrans with the likes of us, then spend a fortune on public works and games to woo the populace, especially when they want to win a vote. Like that Gaius Greybeard or whatever he is called, who’s been trying unsuccessfully to get an ordo seat for years, putting up that fountain at the crossroads recently. And your decurion’s the same — promised new hangings for the ordo room, they say, simply to impress the other councillors. Put extra on the taxes, I shouldn’t be surprised, so we shall pay for it.’

I muttered something indeterminate. The tanner loved to gossip and was enjoying this, but I did not wish to be lured into something indiscreet, which might reach the ears of Quintus Severus later on. I tried to change the subject, hoping that I might learn something about Minimus’s fate. ‘You didn’t see anyone else outside my shop, I suppose, talking to my slave this afternoon?’

He shook his head at me. ‘Too busy looking after my own affairs. But if it was a time-waster, I more than sympathize. I had just the same thing happen earlier today. Fellow came in here and asked to look at hides, and when I’d spent half an hour showing off my wares, he suddenly decided it was all too dear. Though judging by the jewelled cloak-clasp that he wore, he could have afforded anything I had.’

I listened with appropriate noises of concern, but inwardly I was impatient to get my embers and be off. I was about to offer money, but all at once he said, ‘Well, we humble tradesmen had better stick together, hadn’t we? You come this way and we’ll see what we can do. You’ll have to come right through to the workshop, I’m afraid.’

He led the way along the narrow path beside the house, to the large rear courtyard where hides which had been preliminarily soaked were hung out on racks to dry. ‘Come in to the tannage room and get the coals. You’ve timed it very well. I’m boiling up a batch of tanning agent now — alder bark and acorn cups with alum in the blend — the fire’s very hot. Mind that horse hide, it’s still full of stripping mix.’

I stepped back in time to miss the skin that he had gestured to, which was hanging dripping on a rack. It still looked disturbingly and recognizably like a horse, and as I looked about I could identify several sheep- and ox-skins drying off, and there was a group of smaller pelts as well, which I could not identify. The smell was terrible.

He had noticed the direction of my glance. ‘Weasel, otter, stoat and seal,’ he said proudly, pointing each one out. ‘And that one there’s a wolf. The army like them for their signifers and pay a hefty price. This way, then, citizen.’

I ducked around a deer hide and followed him inside.

The tannery room occupied the whole front half of his house, which had been specially adapted to accommodate the trade. The entry door was situated oddly halfway down, and the front part of the space — which we had just walked past outside — was partitioned off from the rest by a low internal wall, and the area thus created was busier than a hive. A series of round vat-pits had been dug into the floor, and a large number of men were hard at work. Some were pushing the hides into the tanning mix with long wooden poles; others were actually standing in the pits with their tunics tucked up above their knees and — supporting their weight on ropes set in the walls — treading the hides into the evil-smelling brew with brown-stained legs and feet. I wondered for a moment how they got in and out, until I realized that the steep sides of the vats were lined with plaster and that there was a series of toe-holes in every one of them.

Between the pits, an army of small children scuttled to and fro with jugs of tanning mix, filling the clay vessels which were set into the floor and which seemed to feed the liquid to the adjoining vats along a deep channel with a glazed pipe in it. The smell, if anything, was even worse in here.

‘You certainly demand good concentration from your slaves,’ I said, surprised to notice that most of the workers didn’t raise their eyes at our approach.

He laughed. ‘It isn’t anything that I do, citizen. It’s simple common sense. One false step and you fall into the vat. It isn’t so much drowning — though that’s always possible — but the mixture doesn’t do you any good, especially if it goes into your mouth and eyes. I lose a couple of people that way every year. You get off lightly if it only stains you brown and makes you smell disgusting for a week or two.’

I nodded. I could see that the whole floor was a series of traps for careless feet. I had to pay attention to where I put my own.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘these are not all slaves. I couldn’t afford the workforce to do all of this. The treaders are mostly my property, of course, but most of the other hands are freemen who are glad to have the work — there’ve been some dreadful harvests and winters recently — or lads whose parents have bound them to the shop. I get a fee for having them while they learn the trade. Some of the work requires a lot of skill and it takes time to train them properly. Through here, then!’ He gestured to the other side of the partition wall, towards the other, smaller section at the back, where he clearly intended we should go.

There was a solid floor there, to my relief, though it was fully occupied by two lines of trestle tables flanked by high three-legged stools on which the workers perched. There must have been a dozen older lads and men: each had a partly treated hide pegged, stretched out, on a rack in front of him, and was either painstakingly scraping it with strangely shaped bronze tools, or, once that was completed, plucking any recalcitrant last hairs out by hand. This time the men did glance up to look at us, overtly curious, as my guide led me down the narrow zigzag space between the rows.

‘The tannage room is through here,’ he said, gesturing to a doorway to the rear. ‘Come in and we will see what we can do about your coals.’

He led the way into a second room, which clearly gave access to the private living area beyond. This area had the benefit of a stone hearth and a window space, and thus served for the preparation of the tannage mix.

It was clearly brewing now. A copper vat was slung on chains above the fire, and something most unpleasant was bubbling inside, filling the area with clouds of acrid steam which the window space did very little to dispel. The boiling was being supervised by an ancient slave, dressed only in a loincloth, a pair of tattered boots and a heavy metal slave-ring of linked chain around his throat, reaching from his skinny shoulders almost to his ears — the sort of thing one sometimes sees on female Nubian slaves and which it requires a skilled blacksmith to remove. As we came into the room, he was being chivvied by a stout woman in a stained tunic and torn shawl, whose grey hair and skin had been dyed brown by smoke. She held a long wooden cooking-paddle in her hand — I suspected that the slave had felt the blade of it.

‘Get a shovel, wife, and fetch us some embers from the fire,’ the tanner said. ‘The citizen pavement-maker has a need of them. And fetch a taper while you’re at it, and light his oil lamp too.’

The woman looked resentfully at him. ‘Fetch a shovel, is it? Just like that? You know it’s kept outside. And who’s to look after my tannage while I’m gone? Neither you nor your smart visitor could do that, I suppose. And don’t tell me that old Glypto will keep an eye on it — the old fool’s so stupid that he’d fall into it. He takes more looking after than the brew itself. Don’t you, eh, Glypto?’ She poked at the old man with the paddle as she spoke. He smiled, a patient foolish little smile.

The tanner turned to me. ‘Glypto came to me many years ago, as part of my wife’s wedding portion,’ he explained. ‘I’m not sure that he was not the better part of the bargain, too.’

His wife flashed him a look that would have tanned skins on its own, then turned to me. ‘Glypto has got old and deaf and foolish with the fumes, but I can’t get rid of him. My husband keeps him just to taunt me, I believe. Says nobody would buy him, but that we cannot simply turn him out on to the street — though he’s good for nothing these days except stoking up the fire and taking rubbish to the midden now and again.’

Poor fellow! I knew the midden-pile she meant. There was a narrow gap between the tanner’s shop and mine — hardly wide enough to be called an alleyway — which had once led through to a coal store behind the tanner’s house and to the lane beyond, but the tanner had moved the coal heap and the path was now disused and blocked by stinking refuse from the houses round about. From time to time, some enterprising fellow with a handcart came to sort it through and sell the rotting contents to the farmers for their fields, but otherwise the rubbish simply lay there mouldering until the river flooded and washed it all away. It was not a place where people chose to go.

Glypto gave another of his feeble smiles. ‘You want me to take the rubbish to the midden now? But, mistress, I took some just an hour ago?’

She made an infuriated sound and tossed her head. ‘You see what I have to suffer, citizen?’ She rounded on Glypto and raised her voice at him. She said very loudly and distinctly, ‘Listen, you old fool, I want you to stay here while I go and fetch a shovel. My husband wants me to supply some coals to this stranger, though I don’t know who he is or what he wants them for. But like you, Glypto, I must do as I am told.’ Then, with a last long hostile look at me, she disappeared into the living quarters at the back, leaving the old slave to glare at me suspiciously.

‘This is the pavement-maker from the shop next door,’ his master told him with a patient sigh. ‘He needs some hot embers because his fire’s gone out.’

Glypto looked appraisingly at me, and then a look of illumination crossed his face. ‘That’s right, master. All gone out next door. I heard the green man say so when I took the rubbish to the pile.’

I stared at him. I have seen men whom one might describe as ‘blue’, when they were painted from head to foot in woad, but. . ‘The green man?’ I echoed.

The tanner raised his eyebrow at me to signal what he thought. ‘Ignore him, citizen. He’s apt to give these fanciful reports. I think he gets strange visions from the fumes.’

It would not have surprised me — the pungency of them was already getting into my eyes and nose and throat — but, in the light of what was currently lying in my shop, I was interested in anyone — green or otherwise — who might have been paying especial attention to my premises. However, I did not want to raise suspicions in the tanner’s mind and make him curious.

I was debating what I could say to Glypto that would elicit more, but at that moment the woman came back in with a lighted taper and a piece of shaped metal on a stick — obviously the home-made ‘shovel’ she had gone to find — and thrust them unceremoniously into her spouse’s hands.

‘There you are, then, husband,’ she said belligerently.

The tanner turned to me. ‘I apologize for my wife’s bad manners, citizen.’ He was lighting my taper even as he spoke and motioning to Glypto that he should shovel some hot coals from the fire into my pot. He nodded towards the woman who was still glowering. ‘I’ll chastise her by and by.’

It was clear that he had never chastised her in his life, or she would not have dared to turn on him and snort derisively, ‘You lift a hand to me and I will walk out of that door. Who would concoct your wretched tannage then? And I’d take my dowry with me — then see how you cope.’

‘I’ve a good mind to send you packing anyway. I would have a legal cause, since you never managed to provide me with a child,’ the tanner said mildly, and that silenced her.

It was clearly an argument that they’d had before, and I was glad when the tanner handed me the pot. The embers in it were still red with heat and it was hot to hold — a good deal hotter than I had bargained for — so I almost dropped it. The tanner said at once, in a loud and careful voice, ‘Get a proper carrying-brazier, Glypto, and take these coals next door. Help the citizen to light his fire. When you have finished, you can bring the brazier back.’

I was about to make excuses and refuse the help — I didn’t want the old slave seeing Lucius’s corpse and returning here to tell the tale — but it occurred to me that if Glypto accompanied me alone, I would have a chance to ask him more about the mysterious green man. I could always keep him standing at the workshop door while I discreetly took the brazier in. In any case, by this time he had scuttled from the room, his booted feet ringing on the stone-tiled floor.

The woman looked resentfully at me. ‘So, Husband, now I’m expected to stoke the fire as well, while you lend this man my slave — as if giving him the coals and light he wants was not enough. I hope you are going to charge him for the privilege?’

I am fairly certain that the tanner would have done — it was no more than I had expected, after all — but probably because his wife was urging it, he shook his head. ‘We local tradesmen must help each other, wife. Come, then, citizen,’ he added cheerfully to me, as Glypto reappeared, wearing a tattered blanket as a cloak and carrying the embers in a proper brazier now. ‘I’ll see you to the street and then get back to work. Glypto will accompany you and get your fire alight.’

‘Or at least he can carry the brazier to my door,’ I corrected hastily, before the slave could take his master’s words as a command. ‘Tanner, all this is very kind of you.’ I nodded at the woman. ‘Good-day, then, goodwife, and accept my thanks. Perhaps one day I can return the compliment and find some service I can do for you.’

She mumbled something in reply — to the general effect that she would rather find herself in Dis — then picked up the wooden paddle and turned back to stirring the tannage savagely. I took my lighted oil lamp and followed the tanner through the door, across the workshop and so out to the gate, with Glypto’s heavy footsteps clattering at my heels.