Requiem for a Slave

Five

The turnip-seller was still standing outside my workshop, of course, his barrow parked beside my pile of stones, but as I came on to the street, his back was turned to me. He seemed to be giving furtive glances at the door, as if he feared the corpse were likely to do something untoward if no one was keeping a careful watch on it.

But I didn’t hurry back to him. Glypto claimed to have seen someone in the alleyway, and that was information which might help me find my slave. I still clung stubbornly to the belief that Minimus was alive. If he’d been killed with Lucius, his body would be here. Captured, he would have some value in the slave market or someone would demand a ransom for his safe return. I hoped the latter, but I could not be sure, and it was vital I had any information I could find. The living must take precedence over the dead, I told myself.

So I turned to the old slave and gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

‘You saw the green man in the alleyway, Glypto? The one that runs between the shops?’

‘You want Glypto to run between the shops?’ The slave looked mystified.

For a moment I was bemused at this, until I thought about it and realized he’d misheard. I should have remembered that he was a little deaf. There was nothing for it but to repeat what I had said, though this time in a louder voice, carefully articulating every word just as I had heard the tanner do. I saw the turnip-seller glance around at us. So much for trying to be discreet, I thought.

This time it was clear that Glypto had understood, though he was clearly suspicious of my motives for addressing him at all. I guessed that, as a general rule, no one said a word to him except to give orders. ‘I was putting rubbish on the midden-pile,’ he said in a reluctant mumble.

‘Of course you were,’ I reassured him, still in ringing tones. ‘Your mistress sent you there. I heard her say as much. And then you saw the man.’ I dropped my voice a notch. ‘Why was he a green man, Glypto? Was it the clothes he wore? A green tunic, maybe? Or even hair, perhaps?’ That was not a wholly preposterous idea. There are some Celtic elders, especially among the rebellious western tribes, who still maintain the ancient customs of our ancestors and bleach their hair and long moustaches with the traditional lime. That sometimes gives a faintly greenish hue.

Glypto shook his head decisively. ‘Green man,’ he said again. ‘I heard them talking,’ he added, as though that settled it.

I abandoned my attempts at making sense of what the green man was, and seized on the implication of what he had just said. ‘You heard them talking?’ I repeated. ‘So he was not alone. How many of them, Glypto? The green man and who else?’

The thin shoulders underneath the tattered blanket shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I only saw the green man. And I heard another voice.’ He stole a look at me. I must have been looking doubtful, because he suddenly burst out, ‘But pay no attention to Glypto, citizen. Perhaps there was nobody in the lane at all. My mistress says that I imagine things. Glypto is too old and deaf and foolish to know anything. She told you, didn’t she? She tells my master, and he believes it too.’ He said it with such bitterness and force that he made me reconsider my own approach to him. A man who could express himself like that was not an idiot.

‘I think Glypto notices a lot of things,’ I said. ‘More than his master and mistress ever dream he does.’ I realized I had adopted the form he’d used himself, talking about ‘Glypto’ as if he wasn’t there. It sounded belittling and I corrected it at once. ‘So you know there was someone with the green man, Glypto?’ I said patiently. ‘Because although you didn’t see him, you did hear the voice?’

My only answer was a reluctant nod.

I was finding this questioning very difficult, for more reasons than one. Not only was it hard to coax answers from the slave, but a breeze was threatening to blow my oil lamp out, so that I had to concentrate on shielding the flame with my free hand. To say nothing of the fact that I was obliged to raise my voice and I was afraid the tanner would overhear and come out to reclaim his slave. But, for the sake of Lucius and my own missing servant, I had to persevere, in case there was something Glypto knew and hadn’t told me yet.

So I persisted. ‘Did you recognize him, Glypto? The owner of the voice? A man who had dealings with your master, possibly?’

‘No one Glypto knew.’ He shot me a knowing glance. ‘And not a man at all. It might have been a woman, but I think it was a boy.’

‘A boy.’ I felt a surge of hope, wondering if it could have been a small red-headed slave. ‘You guessed that from his speech? But you didn’t even glimpse him? Not his hair or clothes?’

Glypto shook his head. The smile he gave was not so foolish now. ‘Not any part of him. He was hidden from me on the far side of the pile. I couldn’t see him for the rubbish heap. Anyway, the green man’s back was in the way.’

‘So the other person obviously wasn’t very tall? Another reason why it was probably a boy?’

‘Exactly, citizen. Glypto is not as stupid as he looks.’ The old slave’s manner was quite triumphant now. He gave me a crafty look. ‘Why are you so interested in all this, citizen?’

It was a reasonable question, even from a slave, but it took me aback. I debated inwardly as to how much I should tell and decided on a partial version of the truth. ‘There is a problem, Glypto. My slave has disappeared. And — before you suggest it — I don’t believe he’s run away. He was very happy here. I think someone has seized him — perhaps to sell him on. But he was very young — only a pageboy that my patron Marcus Septimus Aurelius lent to me. That’s why I’m so interested in what you have to say. I thought it might have been his voice that you heard, that’s all.’

He gave a sly laugh. ‘A slave belonging to your patron, citizen? And you’ve lost him, have you? No wonder you are worried and want to get him back. Even Glypto has heard of Marcus Septimus — he’s the most important man for miles around.’ He was almost gleeful at my predicament. ‘But I’m afraid that I can’t help you. The boy I heard was not a private slave, or not an indoor one. Certainly not the kind of page His Excellence would have. Might have been some sort of land slave, I suppose, but what would a land slave be doing around here?’ He shook his head. ‘Most likely a street urchin, from the sound of him. No education — you could tell that at once. He had rough manners and his speech was coarse, and his Latin was even worse than mine.’

In fact, Glypto’s Latin was not bad at all and he had just used it to surprisingly intelligent effect. I should have noticed that and encouraged him to talk. But I was too busy following my own train of thought. ‘Yet this urchin person said that everything in my workshop had gone out?’ I mused. ‘How would he know that?’ A thought occurred to me. ‘Or was it everyone? Are you sure you heard correctly?’

The foolish, vacant look came down across his face, as suddenly as an actor might hold up a mask to depict an idiot in the theatre. ‘Pay no attention to Glypto, citizen. I told you that before.’

Dear Mars! I had offended him again. I tried another smile. ‘On the contrary, Glypto. You’re an excellent observer and you’ve helped me quite a lot. And there’s more that you can do. What did this green man look like? Was he tall or short? I know that you only saw him from the back, but what was green about him? Did he have a cloak, perhaps?’

It was a mistake to press him on that point again. His voice reverted to a senile whine. ‘Glypto didn’t notice. He didn’t stop to look. His mistress flogs him if he stays out too long.’ He gave a long, exaggerated sigh. ‘As she will do now, when he gets back to her, if you don’t release him quickly and allow him to go home. So he begs you will be quick. Glypto has already told you what he knows, and you can see that it is nothing related to your slave.’

I felt a little guilty, as he clearly meant I should. It was true that I had kept him from his work, and I feared that the flogging was a possibility. Besides, it was clear that he wasn’t going to tell me any more, and the turnip-seller was awaiting us impatiently by now.

I turned away, and almost managed to let the lamp go out. I shielded it hurriedly and it flared up again. ‘Of course, I shouldn’t keep you any longer than I must. I’m sorry, Glypto,’ I said, and led the way towards my workshop door.

Radixrapum was watching us as we approached, and he was looking decidedly displeased. ‘You’ve been a long time coming, citizen,’ he said. ‘I thought you were in a hurry, to sort things out in there. .’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the corpse. ‘You’ve been so long about it that the cart will soon be here and you won’t have time-’

I interrupted him, aware that Glypto was alert to every word. ‘The tanner has been good enough to light my lamp for me, and to give me embers so that I can start the fire,’ I said, trying to signal with my eyes for him to be discreet. ‘You and I will go inside and quickly get it going. Glypto here’ — I nodded at the slave — ‘will stay outside and keep watch on your barrow while we’ve gone. But his mistress needs him; we must not keep him long. We’ll bring the brazier back to him as swiftly as we can.’

The turnip-seller raised a pair of bewildered eyes to mine. ‘But. .’ he began, and then I saw illumination dawn. ‘Ah! I see. Of course.’ He mouthed the words as if the slave was blind. ‘You haven’t told him. .?’

But Glypto had seen it and was obviously aggrieved. He had put on his feeble, stupid face again. I gave the turnip-seller another warning frown. ‘Of course I have told him that I have lost my slave,’ I said, with careful emphasis. ‘That’s what we were discussing in the street just now. And he’s been a lot of help. He overheard some people talking in the alleyway — it may turn out to be quite relevant.’ I didn’t know how sharp the turnip-seller was, but I hoped that he would realize that I had not mentioned Lucius.

I need not have worried. Radixrapum thought a moment, then flashed a knowing grin, clearly delighted to be in my confidence, though his reaction was so careful and extreme that he might have been an actor in the theatre representing a conspirator in a comedy. ‘So, of course, you want me to help you with the fire, seeing that you no longer have a slave.’

That was clearly nonsense. Glypto was obviously skilled with building fires himself and was looking mystified, but Radixrapum had already taken the brazier from him and was on his way around the counter and through the inner door. I followed with my lamp, and we closed the door on Glypto, shutting him outside. The smell in here was noticeably worse, although, compared to the tannery, not so bad at all.

‘You don’t want to tell him that there’s been a murder here?’ the turnip-seller murmured.

‘There has been a murder, but I’m not sure it was here. I think that Lucius was killed elsewhere and brought here afterwards.’ I went over to Lucius’s body as I spoke and started to move it very gently from the pile. The army would do that very soon in any case, I thought.

The turnip-seller took the legs and helped me with my task. ‘I see. But you are still afraid that news will get about?’

‘The tanner is a dreadful gossip and he loves to talk,’ I said, when we had done. I went over to the wall, took down a bunch of home-made tapers that I kept hanging on a nail and selected two of the most perfect ones. ‘At the first opportunity he’ll spread the news abroad, and I will have customers refusing to come near. Especially the one that ordered that piece there.’ I indicated the almost-completed Apollo piece still laid out on the floor. ‘Pedronius is inclined to change his mind in any case.’

He nodded. ‘Pedronius the tax-collector? Even I have heard of him. Didn’t he buy that fancy villa just a little while ago, from the councillor who died so suddenly?’

‘Or from his heirs, at least,’ I said, and made him smile. ‘In fact, the man in question left no living family, so everything went to the “residuary legatees” — most of the important men in town got some of it.’ I knew that for a fact. Marcus had been a beneficiary himself.

This was not unusual. Any man who wished to rise in life would make a will like that, nominating a series of influential men to inherit his estate if no other heirs were found: it prevented confiscation by the imperial purse, which would otherwise have been inevitable, and had the additional advantage of ensuring patronage from the people who were named, although in practice they rarely profited from the will. However, it did sometimes happen, as in the present case. ‘In fact, the villa was left to the chief town councillor, the very customer that you saw outside my shop, but he didn’t want it — he had a bigger one — so he put it on the market before it cost him tax. I believe that’s how Pedronius came to hear of it.’

The turnip-seller handed me the taper-spikes to stick the candles on. ‘I gather the tax-gatherer paid an enormous price for it — and then discovered that the deal did not include the slaves.’

‘So my patron told me at the time,’ I assented. ‘It was not entirely the decurion’s fault — the slaves had been bequeathed to someone else — but Pedronius threatened to take him before the aediles, and in the end Quintus agreed to provide him with a chief slave to run the place, though Pedronius had to provide the other servants for himself, and, of course, there were lots of them needed in an establishment like that. There’s been bad feeling between the households ever since.’

‘Not a good beginning,’ Radixrapum said.

‘Exactly! And Pedronius is a superstitious man,’ I said. ‘And that is just the trouble. The other owner died there suddenly, you know. Pedronius fears that the house attracts bad luck. He wants this Apollo piece in his garden to ward it off and to appease the gods. Now he’s likely to suppose that the plaque is cursed as well. I only wish that I could get it into place before the story of the murder gets around. Unfortunately, I haven’t got a cart to move it on.’

‘But surely your decurion noticed it was here? It sounds as if he’d take delight in crowing over the tax-gatherer’s ill luck.’

I shook my head. ‘He didn’t come inside. So you and I are the only ones who know the plaque has been here with a corpse.’

‘I see.’ He looked delighted. ‘Except for the murderer, I suppose. But he’s not going to tell.’

‘Exactly!’ I said dryly. ‘And we must work quickly now before Glypto’s curiosity gets too much for him and he comes in to look. If he tells his master, it will be all over town.’ I placed the lighted candle by Lucius’s bandaged head. ‘Though I expect it’s hopeless anyway. I can’t pretend there hasn’t been a death. Quintus will doubtless tell his dinner guests in exaggerated terms, and the tanner will see the army when it comes to get the corpse. But, all the same, I may yet find a way — if I can find my son and have a cart again. So another half-sestertius if you get the fire alight and keep your own counsel about what you have seen.’

‘Another half-sestertius, citizen? You have a bargain there.’

He said it so eagerly that I rephrased the offer. ‘I will give the money next time that you call — after I have got that plaque in place and I’m sure that your gossip hasn’t reached the customer.’

He grinned. ‘You can trust me, citizen. I’ll help you keep the secret in any way I can. For the money you are offering, I would do more than that. First, though, I will get the fire alight. Flame is known to purify a room and keep evil ghosts away.’ He knelt at once beside the hearth and began raking out the ash and dust. He tipped the embers from the brazier in and covered them with the dry leaves and kindling that I kept nearby, blowing gently on them until a flame appeared.

The promise of money had worked its charm again. Perhaps I should have tried bribery with Glypto too, but I hadn’t thought of it. Anyway, I was not carrying much money in my purse and I was counting on bribing the watchmen at the gate — in case there was news of Minimus being taken out that way. I placed a second lighted taper at the corpse’s feet and turned to see how the fire was getting on.

The turnip-seller had my leather bellows in his hand and had coaxed the flame to brighter life, and as I turned, he leaned back on his heels and tossed a log of wood into the hearth. He grunted and clambered slowly to his feet. ‘There you are, citizen. I think that’s well alight. But it won’t burn properly until you clean the hearth. You’ll have to get your slave to sweep it thoroughly some time.’

‘That is supposing that I ever find my slave again.’

‘Of course. But you said the tanner’s man had information that might help? Something that will help you to find the murderer as well?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Glypto says so, but he has strange ideas. He talks about a green man in the alleyway. The tanner thinks he’s foolish and imagines things, but I am not being half-deaf so sure. It’s not the clothes or hair, apparently. In what way could a man be green apart from that?’

The street-vendor scratched his turnip head. ‘I don’t know, citizen. You’re the clever one.’ His face brightened. ‘Unless you’re right about the bandits, and the man had come from hiding in the woods. There’s rumoured to be someone in the town supporting them, and I hear they do sew leaves and branches to their clothes, so that they blend in better with the trees.’

I nodded. I had heard that rumour too. ‘Though in that case you would think that when they came to town-’

‘Of course!’ Radixrapum used a dusty palm to strike his brow. ‘They would have to take them off, or they’d look conspicuous. I should have thought of that. I’m sorry, citizen.’

‘Don’t apologize,’ I said. It always helped to talk things through with someone else and I was coming to respect the turnip-seller’s intellect. He had raised more than one idea I hadn’t thought of for myself. It was nice to have an ally in whom I could confide, since there was no Junio or Minimus to help.

The turnip-seller was clearly flattered by my praise. He said, in an obvious attempt to help again, ‘Did you ask that slave if there were any customers next door this afternoon?’

In fact, I hadn’t. The story of the green man had driven it from my mind. ‘Not yet,’ I answered. ‘I’ll do it as soon as we get outside again. If you’re ready, we’ll take the brazier back.’

He nodded. ‘At least poor old Lucius has got his candles now, and his ghost won’t be offended that he was not shown respect.’

It crossed my mind that being throttled from behind, dragged along and thrown face-down on a pile of jagged tiles was hardly a demonstration of decent reverence, but I did not say so. Instead, I picked up the empty brazier and went outside with it.

Glypto was standing close beside to the door, but as soon as he saw me he stepped guiltily away, although I am certain that being half-deaf he could not have overheard. I gave him the empty brazier with a smile. ‘Take that to your master and thank him for his help.’

‘Is that all, citizen? Can poor Glypto go back to work again?’

‘Just one thing more, since you have sharp eyes. Tell me, did anyone come to your shop this afternoon? Anyone besides me, of course, I mean. Anyone who might have seen what happened to my slave?’

The old man did his simpering face again. ‘How would old Glypto know a thing like that? Glypto is kept busy in the tannage room.’

That was true, of course, but I knew the man by now. He was resentful and holding something back — I could tell that from the way that he would not meet my eyes. ‘But you went out with the rubbish and you fetched the fuel to stoke the fire. And — whatever your mistress supposes to the contrary — you keep your eyes about you. Was there anyone?’

He was torn between stubbornness and a desire to show what he could do. You could almost see the battle on his face. At last he said, ‘Only the usual delivery of hides. And the quartermaster from the barracks wanting a wolf-skin for the army signifer.’

I nodded. The standard-bearers of the legions often wore such hides draped across their head and shoulders when they were on parade, leading the troops on ceremonial marches through the streets. They wear them into battle too, apparently — presumably to make the standard easy to pick out — and I have even seen wolf-skins worn on the daily route march, although I always thought that they must be insufferably hot. ‘I saw one at the tannery.’

‘That’s the one he’s bought. He was lucky to get it,’ Glypto said. ‘You can’t get the wolves these days, with all those rebels in the wood.’

‘But that was not the only customer?’ I said. ‘There was another fellow who came in looking round — a man with a fancy cloak-clasp, I believe. I remember your master mentioned him to me.’

The mask had come down on Glypto’s face again. ‘Glypto can’t tell you, citizen. He wasn’t in the shop. He has already told you about everyone he saw, and his mistress will be furious with him for being late.’

There was no point in pressing him, and I let him go, though I did call after him as he scampered off, ‘There will be a quadrans for you the next time that we meet — more if you happen to remember something else.’

He paused and turned around. ‘But how can I be sure to see you, citizen? They don’t let Glypto out. Only to put on the rubbish on the pile.’

‘Then I will meet you at the midden-heap,’ I said. ‘If you can contrive to be there tomorrow’ — I was about to say ‘when the sun is at its height’ but I remembered that I had a naming ceremony to attend, and I amended it — ‘in the late afternoon. I will keep a watch for you.’

He nodded. ‘Till tomorrow then,’ and he went back through the gate into the tannery. Almost at once I heard the shrill voice of the tanner’s wife. It raised in hectoring reproof, followed shortly after by the sound of blows. I cringed a little. I felt responsible.