The Germanicus Mosaic

Chapter Two

I had donned a toga, of course, as the strict letter of the law demanded. All male Roman citizens throughout the empire are supposed to wear one ‘in public’, but often I didn’t bother. The edict is not much enforced, and a man in my position is more likely to be stopped and questioned on suspicion of unlawfully wearing the badge of citizenship, than for failing to wear it. Besides, frankly, I dislike the things: tricky to put on, hard to clean, and impossible to work in, because (as you will know if you have ever worn one) they force on the wearer that measured, upright gait which is the hallmark of Romans everywhere, otherwise the whole thing undrapes itself. But I do have one, for formal occasions — useful for impressing Roman clients — and today I was accompanying Marcus. Occasions do not come much more formal than that.

There were advantages, too, of a kind. The milling throngs in the street stood back deferentially to let us pass and the tanner’s man — who saw me every day in my simple tunic and cloak — goggled openly. Only a plain unbleached white-wool toga, of course, none of Marcus’ patrician stripes, but transformation enough. I sighed. Next time they wanted a contribution to maintain the neighbourhood fire-watch (one of the delights of living between a tannery and a candlemaker’s was the constant interesting possibility of conflagration) they would expect an extra few denarii from me.

When we got to our transport, though, I was glad of my warm garment. Marcus had brought along a courier gig, light and fast, but desperately draughty compared to the covered imperial carriage I had been expecting. The driver was standing beside it, holding the horse, looking bored and perished to the bone in his thin tunic. I followed Marcus into the gig, as gracefully as my toga would allow, and gave the lad a sympathetic smile. It is one of the less recognised miseries of being a slave, that everlasting waiting.

The driver seemed to take my smile as an encouragement and we set off at a clip which set the gig bouncing. We took the shortest route, back through the town, and I appreciated once again the advantages of rank. No humble mortal like myself could bring wheeled transport inside the walls in daylight, or blithely propose to take precedence on the military roads. But with Marcus anything was possible.

Out of the East Gate, skirting the narrow tenements of the straggling northern suburb, away from the river marshes and up towards the high road that runs along the escarpment. Towards Corinium, I thought with a pang. It is a good road, kept up by local taxes for the imperial post — the military messengers — and, like all Roman roads, paved and straight. We made good progress, out past the burial sites which line the roadside these days (the Romans have made it illegal to bury the dead within the city), and were soon into open country.

We had seen nothing on the road, beyond a lumbering farm cart and a lone cloaked messenger galloping hell-for-leather towards Glevum, but presently there was a distant glint of bobbing metal ahead. I saw Marcus grimace. A cohort of soldiers on the march; auxiliaries recently relieved from Isca, probably. They would keep up a good pace, but they filled the road, and with their supply carts and camp followers up ahead (wives were not allowed, but many soldiers had families all the same) the whole procession could straggle for miles.

‘There is a back way to Crassus’ estate,’ I said doubtfully. ‘I learned it when I was staying at the villa. It is shorter, but the road is poor.’

That was an understatement. The road is villainous, one of the narrow, winding, unsurfaced tracks which used to serve as local thoroughfares before the Romans came. As a pedestrian, struggling to and from the villa with my mosaic pieces on a handcart, I had rather enjoyed its melancholy charm. There was even a ruined roundhouse halfway along it, presumably the homestead of the original native farmer from whom Crassus had ‘acquired’ the land.

In a fast gig, the journey promised to be exacting rather than melancholy.

Marcus had no such qualms. ‘We’ll take it,’ he said, and I instructed the driver where to turn.

It was exacting — more exacting than a Roman tax-collector. We lurched perilously down the rocky track, the gig threatening to overset at every turn and with overhanging branches clawing at our faces, until we shuddered down a final hill and joined up with Crassus’ wide and gravelled farm lane. We forked through the left-hand gate, round to the back of the estate into the farm and farmyard. Unchallenged. The usual gatekeeper was not at his post, and there were no land-slaves tending the animals or working the estate. Only a tethered goat looked up at us in surprise.

It was almost eerie.

We took the gig right to the inner gateway, and left the driver to wait (again). The gate was open, and we walked straight in, past the heaped woodpiles for the furnaces and the fruit trees neatly planted against the wall. We had almost reached the door to the inner garden before someone came scurrying to greet us: a big raw-boned man, wringing his hands like a soothsayer prophesying doom. I recognised him at once, as much from the fluttering hands as from the blue tunic: I had met him when I was laying the librarium pavement. Andretha, the foreman of the slaves.

He was breathless with self-justification. ‘I have rounded everyone up, excellence. In the inner courtyard. The aediles left a guard.’

He led the way. They were all there. Not just the household, but anyone who had happened to be passing by when the discovery was made; all waiting, trembling with cold, fear and the bitter draught which always blew through the colonnades. I remembered it vividly. The librarium was in a tiny room leading off that courtyard.

Why is it that retired officers, especially foreign ones, insist on building country villas like this, on the Roman style? Lofty columns and courtyard gardens fed by the rain from the high sloping roofs might be very welcome and cool in the heat of Rome. Here, in the wet, cold winters of the Insula Britannica, despite all the paintings on the surrounding walls and the statues in little arbours, the effect was damp, draughty and dank. No wonder Crassus had arranged to have a private hypocaust and bathhouse installed. It wasn’t just a sign of status; the underfloor heating made the front of the house — the owner’s quarters — tolerably habitable.

‘They are all here, all the household!’ Andretha bowed and bobbed his obeisance like a twig in a whirlpool. ‘And anyone passing by the gate. I had them stopped and brought here for you, most respected excellence. One can’t be too careful.’

I glanced at the huddled group. The outsiders first. Two turnip sellers, fuming at losing a day’s trade at the market. A pedlar. A beggar. A soothsayer. Even, incongruously, a travelling merchant and his plump wife, conspicuous in British embroidered wool.

Behind them, the household. I recognised some of them slightly. Land-slaves in hessian aprons, rough tunics and with leather ‘boots’ roughly shaped and bound around their feet with strings; cleanshaven house-slaves in neat blue tunics; ageing slavewomen in shapeless sacks; and, in the corner, the two short-skirted, perfumed slavegirls with haunted faces and braided hair. The guards smirked, obviously imagining only too clearly what duties those two performed for gross, ugly Germanicus.

‘They are all waiting, excellence,’ Andretha was saying, over and over like a Vestal chant.

‘I will speak to them later,’ Marcus said. ‘First, let us see this body.’

I could have shown Marcus to the spot myself. Out of the courtyard and round to the side of the house where the boiler room lay. Another large guard with a stave was standing at the entrance to the stoke room.

Marcus gestured him aside and we went in. It was dark and stuffy. The air was heavy with the nauseous, unmistakable smell of death, and still oppressively warm, although the fire had been allowed to die more than a day ago. The room was empty: nothing there but the great heaps of fuel and the open entrance to the furnace, its white embers still faintly glowing.

Nothing, that is, except for the body of a man. He was dressed in centurion’s uniform — leather-skirted doublet, breast-armour, groin protector, greaves and sandals. A sword and dagger still hung at the belt and there were torcs of office around his neck. A beaten brass mask of Mars leaned drunkenly against the wall, and one dead arm still trailed against the crested helmet as if in some final gesture of farewell. The other hand, and the head, or what remained of them, were thrust into the open furnace. The effect was obscene.

‘Examine it, Libertus.’ Marcus seemed unable to bring himself to look too closely at that charred skull, the blackened, fleshless bones which had once been fingers and hand.

I bent forward and lowered the lifeless trunk gently to the floor. The legs and arms had been shaved, recently by the look of it, but the torso was short, stocky and disconcertingly hairy. The features had been consumed by the flame, but there was no mistaking the ring on the charred finger. Crassus’ seal. I had seen it many times. Marcus, too.

There was one obvious conclusion to be drawn. Marcus drew it.

‘By Mithras,’ he exclaimed, ‘the aediles were right! It is Germanicus! No wonder they couldn’t find him. So! All we have to do now is find someone who wanted him dead.’ He grinned at me as he spoke — that description probably encompassed almost everyone in Glevum. ‘All right, let’s go and see what these people have to tell us. We’ll see them in the triclinium. I’m sure there will be a brazier in there, and if this looks like taking too long we can have some food served in comfort.’

‘Naturally, excellence.’ Andretha led the way. It wouldn’t occur to Marcus that there might be difficulties for anyone in these arrangements. With the other servants under guard, Andretha would have to light the brazier and organise the food himself, to say nothing of the problems of the waiting passers-by who would have families concerned for their safety.

The dining room was a fine room. I had seen it before — painted plaster walls and a mosaic floor in a geometric pattern (not one of mine, but I recognised good workmanship). Marcus reclined on one of the gilded couches, and I perched on a bronze stool nearby.

The questioning began. The ‘outsiders’ were easily disposed of. The merchant and his wife had never visited Glevum before and had lodged at a nearby inn the night before. There would be a dozen witnesses who could swear to their movements. They had left their lodgings only an hour earlier, and it would have needed that time to get here. It was the same with the turnip growers; it was impossible for them to have been at the villa before the body was discovered.

The pedlar and the beggar were no more helpful. Marcus had them flogged, on the off-chance, but it did nothing to refresh their memories and in the end he let them go. The soothsayer did claim that he had important information from the omens, but when this turned out to be that ‘the dead man was possessed of secret enemies’ Marcus was so infuriated that he ordered him marched to Glevum and locked up for a week, though not in any expectation of learning anything more to the purpose.

We saw Andretha next. He was anxious and trembling, swearing that the murderer could not possibly be anyone in the villa. I could understand why. Strictly, if a master was murdered by one of his own slaves, the whole household could be put to death, although the last time that sentence had been carried out in Rome there had been a major riot, so the law was not always implemented these days — provided the individual culprit could be identified. The chief slave, however, might still be found guilty of negligence, and he could pay for that with his life in some interestingly excruciating ways.

‘No one in the household,’ he protested again.

‘All the same,’ Marcus said, turning to me, ‘any one of the servants might have done it, and no doubt most of them hated him. I suppose the land-slaves are less likely. They don’t usually come to the house so it would be difficult for any of them to hide the body in the hypocaust.’

‘Impossible, excellence,’ Andretha said, hastily. ‘If one of those roughly dressed fellows came anywhere too near the villa I’d have him caught at once and punished.’

‘Unless,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘the house was empty, as it was during the procession.’ Andretha gave me a poisonous look.

Marcus frowned. ‘But during the procession, Crassus Germanicus was alive. I saw him with my own eyes.’

‘And as soon as it was over,’ Andretha rushed in with relief, ‘all the household slaves came back to the villa together in the farm cart. No one could have come faster. I saw to that. I was in a hurry to make sure everything was properly prepared for Crassus’ return.’

I could believe that. Failure to have the brazier lit and food and drink waiting would have resulted in someone feeling his master’s lash. Crassus was not a tolerant man.

‘I swear to you,’ Andretha said, wringing his fingers, ‘there were servants on watch for his return all night. I don’t believe anyone could have come to the villa without being seen or heard.’

‘And yet,’ Marcus said dryly, ‘someone did come to the villa. Someone brought the body back and put it in the hypocaust. If there was a watch, you’d have thought somebody might have noticed.’

Andretha was so terrified by this suggestion that he had failed in his duty, that he could not have made a sensible answer if he tried. He didn’t try. He simply spread his hands hopelessly, as if there was no sensible answer he could make.

‘All the slaves returned together, you say?’ I put in.

Andretha nodded. ‘Except Daedalus, Crassus’ personal slave. Of course we expected that. He would have stayed with Crassus, to fetch horses or wine, and carry torches. See him home, guard him if necessary. Only, of course, he hasn’t returned either.’

‘So where,’ Marcus wanted to know, ‘is Daedalus now?’

An anguished look spread across Andretha’s face. ‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. He was supposed to stay with Crassus. Do you suppose Daedalus killed him, at the procession?’ He was grasping at straws. If Germanicus was murdered in Glevum, it was not his responsibility. His duty to guard his master against all comers was within the estate.

‘As I remember,’ I said, ‘Daedalus was promised his freedom at the next moon.’ The man had been boasting of the fact when I was at the villa. It had struck me as odd, at the time. Crassus was not the sort of man to manumit a good slave out of kindness of heart.

Andretha nodded eagerly. ‘That is true.’

‘Then surely,’ Marcus said, ‘Daedalus had less to gain than anyone from Crassus’ death? He will be sold on now, or left to the next owner with the rest of the estate.’

‘Or perhaps he saw his master killed, and fled in a panic?’ Andretha babbled on. ‘There are always brigands and cut-throats at these processions. That is more likely, if he failed to guard him. .’ You could almost see hope rising to Andretha’s face. Cowardice from a personal bodyguard was not his responsibility either. ‘Yes, excellence, it must have been that.’

I was thinking aloud. ‘Then why put the body in the hypocaust? Why not just abandon it in the town? Why would Daedalus, of all people, bring it all the way back to the villa, where it was certain to be discovered and bring suspicion on him? Come to that, why would anyone? If a killer wants to dispose of a body, why not just push it into the river or bury it somewhere? Why drag it back to the villa and put it in the furnace? Unless Crassus did manage to come back here, somehow, and the murder took place in the villa after all.’

‘He couldn’t have done.’ Andretha flashed me another venomous glance. ‘There were people looking out for him from the moment the procession was over.’

‘Well,’ Marcus said, ‘let’s talk to them and see if we can throw some light on the matter. Starting with the gatekeeper, I think.’

Andretha went out, and Marcus turned to me. ‘It is just as the aediles told me. You see why I am concerned? It looks like a political murder. It seems impossible for it to be a mere household affair.’

‘Difficult, certainly,’ I said. ‘I'm sure that if Andretha knew anything about it he would probably have told us. If it was a household murder his one hope of clemency would be to turn informer. But why do you think it is political?’

Marcus looked around, as if the plaster walls might be listening, and said, sheepishly, ‘Because Aulus the gatekeeper is an informer of mine. I have never trusted Germanicus — he always had far too much money for a mere auxiliary centurion.’

‘He was a great gambler,’ I said doubtfully, remembering tales of several dice parties which had taken place while I was working at the villa. ‘And doubtless the dice were on his side. Crassus was the sort of man who would ensure that.’

‘He was famous for it,’ Marcus said, ‘or rather for his unexplained good fortune. Or so Aulus tells me. Apparently the Fates took a kindly hand, even in his army career.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, Crassus remained an optio for a long time. He wanted to be promoted to centurion, he kept grumbling that he was overdue for promotion, but it never happened. They said there was no post available, and then his commanding centurion conveniently died — a little too conveniently, gossip said.’

‘You think he killed a senior officer?’ I said. ‘Surely not! That would be treachery.’ I was not debating a moral point; that sort of crime carried an automatic death penalty, and Crassus had been very much alive, at least until recently.

Marcus laughed. ‘I don’t suppose he did it, in fact. The death was not especially suspicious, the man just suddenly fell ill one night and died. There are always unexpected deaths, through infections or poor food. There were rumours, but Germanicus had witnesses to say he was miles away that night, and he gained his centurion’s baton. But whispers persisted among the company. At least, so Aulus tells me.’

‘So what are you suggesting? That somebody believed the story and killed Crassus for revenge?’

‘No. In that case someone would have stabbed him years ago — and it is probably nothing but rumour, anyway. If there had been any real suspicion he would have been executed then and there. But it gives some indication of the man. People believed it of him. And he may have old enemies, or old confederates, in the army still. Aulus informs me that twice in the last few weeks armed soldiers have come to the villa at night and Germanicus has gone out to meet them — having first ordered his gatekeeper away on an errand.’

That was seriously bad news. Even I knew that sections of the army wanted to overthrow the emperor and instate the legionary legate, Priscus, in his stead, while other sections favoured the governor, Pertinax, for the imperial crown. The complication, from my point of view, was that these two treasonable alternatives were not politically equal. Marcus was the governor’s personal representative. He rose or fell with Pertinax. No wonder he was concerned about possible political conspiracy.

‘How do you know this?’ I asked, warily. If he was right I stood a good chance of ending up in the hypocaust myself.

‘Aulus had the presence of mind to keep watch, and saw them. One man came each time, and Germanicus went out and was whispering to each of them in the lane. But here is Aulus, he can tell you himself.’

Aulus was unwilling. He was a great, coarse, lumbering bear of a man with a leering manner, shifting eyes and a nervous tongue which licked out and moistened his lips as he spoke. Serving two masters is always a dangerous task, but he told his story at last, glancing occasionally around him in case Andretha was lurking in the shadows. In essence, though, it was precisely as Marcus had said. He could add nothing, although he hedged the story round with excuses: it had been too dark to see in detail, and he had been too far away to hear. At least two visits, though, he was certain of that. One three days before the procession, and one a week or two earlier. A centurion on both occasions. He was unable to say if it was the same man.

About the disappearance of Crassus, though, he was adamant. It was exactly as Andretha had reported, and he knew absolutely nothing more about it. By the time Marcus let him go, Aulus was sweating.

‘He’s hiding something,’ Marcus said. ‘But we’ll get the truth out of him. By flogging if necessary.’

I shook my head. ‘I doubt it, excellence. By all means interview the household, but I don’t believe flogging will help. No one saw this, except the murderer himself, and he won’t tell you. Perhaps we should be asking in the town? Looking for someone who saw Crassus after the procession?’

Marcus frowned. ‘Well, perhaps. But remember, I expect discretion.’

I sighed. The implications of that did not escape me. Marcus had no intention of demeaning himself by interrogating the townspeople at random. He expected me to do that, when I had finished here. In the meantime precious time would be passing.

‘There may be someone who saw Daedalus, too. He is a missing slave, after all.’

That roused him. A runaway slave is a serious matter. ‘You think he did it? You know the man, you were in this household for weeks.’

I laughed, shortly. ‘I hardly knew him. I was in the librarium. A man who works for Crassus has little time for gossiping.’

‘But you knew his reputation?’

I did. Crassus’ favourite slave; clever, shrewd, talented — he had a gift for mimicry which made him a favourite for ‘fashionable’ entertainments — but ambitious too. ‘He could have done it. He is calculating enough. But he had been promised his freedom. He may even have received it — it is not unknown for men to free their slaves at the festival, as a sort of sacrifice.’

‘And then he turned on his ex-master? It is hard to see why, although Andretha might hope so. If Crassus was killed by a free man, it changes everything.’

‘Why else would he disappear?’

Marcus raised his eyebrows, and voiced what both of us had been thinking. ‘Suppose Germanicus threatened to refuse him, after all? Changed his mind about manumission?’

‘And Daedalus killed him in a fury? Murder in the heat of the moment, that I can understand. But why bring the body back? And how? Dragging a corpse for miles is to invite discovery, and anyway they could not have returned here before the others. Crassus was in the procession. He would have had to wait till the end of the sacrifices, and they had no transport. The servants had the farm cart, and you heard Andretha — Crassus intended to hire horses when he had finished feasting.’

‘He didn’t do that,’ Marcus put in. ‘The aediles have already made enquiries. No one hired a horse, or a carriage. There were none free to hire immediately after the procession. He and Daedalus would have been on foot — unless they stole a nag. Or borrowed one. There was some itinerant pilgrim who passed this way on a mule, but they didn’t hire that either, he was seen trotting back with it long before the festival was over. No thefts have been reported.’

‘In any case,’ I said, ‘a man who wanted to hide a corpse could hardly have risked stealing a horse as well. He’d have had half the countryside after him. No, I fear you are right. We must try to trace those armed soldiers. But — let us listen to the household first. There may be something we can glean from them.’

But no one — not the lute player, not the cooks, not the house-slaves or the dancing girls — had anything to add to the story we had heard already. Crassus set out early for the procession with Daedalus and had insisted on walking the three or four miles to Glevum because the day was fine and he intended feasting afterwards. It sounded daunting to me, walking miles in full armour and then taking part in a procession, but presumably it was nothing to an old soldier trained to march all day carrying his entire kit.

The servants had all travelled to Glevum together on the farm cart, watched the procession, and come home the same way, and no one had seen or heard anything of Crassus until the two men who stoked the hypocaust went down at midday to relight the furnace.

Marcus questioned them harshly, but they were unshakable. They had gone to the feast with the others and, having been granted a holiday from stoking, had spent the afternoon chopping logs for the extra woodpile in full view of the slaves carrying water and tending the inner gardens. The stoke-hole was round at the side of the villa and, with the furnaces out, no one had been near it. Equally, no one could have got to it from outside without being seen.

‘So, we are back to politics,’ Marcus said, over the bowl of stew and fish sauce which the kitchen had finally produced. ‘It seems nobody in the household did it. Or all of them did.’ He looked at me enquiringly.

I said nothing. I was trying to spoon up my stew without actually swallowing any of the fish sauce — that horrible fermented stuff with anchovies in it that the Romans seem to put on everything. Furthermore, I was trying to do so without Marcus noticing. I gave him a wan smile.

Marcus said languidly, ‘Or perhaps Crassus’ death is just some punishment by the gods. It was the feast of Mars after all.’ He finished his own stew and pushed the plate away. ‘Well, I’ll leave it to you, Libertus. I’ve done all I can here. Send to me, if you discover anything. I suppose we must allow Andretha to make arrangements for the funeral procession, so we will meet in three days, at least. In the meantime, I’ll ask at the guardroom, and see if there is any information about those two soldiers. They must have been missed, they were out well after curfew. And now, I must get back to Glevum. My carriage driver will be anxious for his supper.’