The Germanicus Mosaic

Chapter Seven

I found Rufus in the slaves’ quarters at the back of the house. It was a big barn-like building with a central nave, and aisles divided by columns. One side of it was screened off for the women slaves, and at the far end of the building was a partitioned room, which I guessed was for Andretha. Between the aisles were the sleeping spaces for the household slaves; the land labourers, obviously, had more rustic accommodation elsewhere.

Rufus was sitting on a bed — presumably his own — stringing his lute. He was clearly preparing to join the musicians and I had arrived just in time. I wanted to speak to him quickly, before Andretha had him in there for hours playing the lament.

I had not said so to Aulus, but I knew Rufus very slightly. He was a Silurian from the rebel tribes in the West, a slim, graceful youth, with delicate features — almost pretty, like a woman, with his blue eyes, fair skin and aureole of auburn curls. But for all his girlish looks there was an air about him, something in the stubborn jut of the jaw, the determined lift of the chin. When I had first been at the villa laying the pavement, he had come into the room one day, and admired the work.

‘We are both artists,’ he had said, at once, ‘I in music and you in stone. We are both Celts. It is in our blood.’ I had found the sentiments rather endearing, although I should have been more impressed by his flattery if the pavement had been one of my own design, and not Junio’s Cave Canem. Even so, I wondered that any slave cared to look.

I am too easily flattered. Aulus had just unwittingly suggested a much more likely explanation. The librarium had once been used for the slavegirls, as I knew, and Regina had been given ‘the slavegirls’ room’. It was not hard to deduce the rest. When Regina had gone again, Rufus had come to the room, probably hoping to find his girl. No wonder he had never returned to see the finished pavement.

He looked up now as I approached, though his hands continued to caress the lute. Long, tapering, sensitive fingers, but strong and dextrous too, from plying the strings.

‘Rufus!’ I said heartily, sitting down beside him uninvited. ‘How fares your lady?’

He did not ask who I meant, or make any attempt to deny it. ‘Faustina? She is well. And likely to be so too, now that oa- now that her master is dead.’ His voice sounded passionate; he had been going to say ‘that oaf’, I was certain of it. I saw, too, that he had been crying.

‘Then why the tears?’

He looked at me helplessly. ‘It occurs to me. . I hadn’t thought before. . even if we are not executed, when the villa is sold we may be separated, Faustina and I. Sold to different masters. You cannot imagine. .’

Oh, but I could. I could imagine only too well. For a moment I was back in that roundhouse twenty years ago, a raider’s dagger at my throat and a rope around my neck, watching helplessly as they dragged Gwellia from me, shrieking and struggling, her hands outstretched and her lovely face ugly with tears. I could imagine, perhaps better than Rufus. I had seen that scene a thousand times in my dreams.

I must be careful, I thought. Rufus was not at the procession, and he had lied to me about it. It would be too easy to let personal sympathy for his plight cloud my judgement on that fact. Still, he prided himself on a kind of Celtic honesty. I decided on a direct approach.

‘You were not at the procession.’ He made to protest, and I went on, ‘Not all of the procession, at least.’

His cheeks turned the colour of his hair, but he met my eyes. ‘So Aulus told you? I am not surprised — I refused to pay him. I have no money anyway. Yes, it’s true. I couldn’t see Andretha anywhere — I supposed he had slipped off to a tavern somewhere — but I forgot Aulus. He would inform on anyone for money. I suppose you paid him?’

‘I did not, though he is certainly someone’s spy.’ I did not enlighten him further. ‘Where did you go?’

‘Didn’t he discover that too? I am surprised.’

‘He thought,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘that you might have gone to meet Faustina.’

He seized on the words. ‘And if I did, what then? It isn’t easy to find five minutes alone. Yet I love her. If I had not been sold to slavery myself, I would have bought her and married her. I would have found the money somehow.’

He was freeborn, of course, Aulus had said so. Before they sold him, such a marriage would have been possible. But not now. Slaves could not legally marry anyone. Even previous marriages, like my own, were legally void for slaves.

I smiled at his simple fervour. ‘Supposing that Crassus would agree to part with her.’

That sobered him. ‘Yes. Though I would have waited. Ten years if necessary. He would have tired of her by then.’

‘Then you still may. Is not your slave contract for ten years? And if Lucius owns you. .’

He brightened. ‘It is true, then, that Lucius will inherit? There was a rumour, but I hardly dared to hope. Faustina says-’ He stopped.

‘What does Faustina say?’

He looked at me anxiously. ‘I should not have heard this, it was woman’s talk. .’

‘All the same,’ I urged.

‘She seemed to think Regina would inherit something, that she had some kind of hold over Germanicus. Something he did or said when he was young. Regina came here a moon or two ago, claiming to be his. .’ he glanced at me. ‘Do you know about this?’

‘I have heard something.’

‘Faustina did her hair and helped her bathe and dress when she was here. Regina had her own slave and a custos — a travelling companion — but she preferred Faustina. She sent her own maid away. She really wished, I think, to marry Crassus. For his money, perhaps. Faustina could not understand it. All the money in the world would not tempt her to his bed, if she had the choice.’

But of course, as his slave, she had no choice at all. ‘Did Germanicus know,’ I said carefully, ‘about your feelings?’ I had heard Aulus’ account of this, but I wondered what Rufus would say.

He surprised me. ‘Yes. He must have done. He never spoke of it. But it gave him pleasure, I think, to make me witness what he did to her. If he made her dance for him at entertainments — he had a costume for her, a skirt only and a necklace of hazelnuts — he would make me play while she danced. She would have to dance closer and closer, half naked, right over him, and he would snap at the nuts with his teeth. Sometimes he bit the nuts, sometimes her breasts — savage bites — while the other guests laughed and cheered. She would be weeping sometimes, with pain and shame, while I was forced to watch it. And then he would send her off, to wait his pleasure, and when the guests were gone he would call for me, to play the lute outside the door, and listen to him with her on the bed within.’

Suddenly, I could imagine that. Crassus was like a cruel cat with his victims, not striking them outright but teasing them with careful tortures.

There were tears of anger in the boy’s eyes again. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘Crassus knew.’

‘Did you kill him, Rufus?’ I could almost have understood it if he had.

‘I never touched him,’ Rufus said. He got up. ‘And now, excuse me, I am wanted at the lament. I risk a beating already.’ He moved towards the door.

I called after him. ‘Rufus, how well did you know Daedalus?’

He stopped, surprised. ‘Better than most. We shared a love of music. He was a clever man. I liked him, although many didn’t.’

‘Then why,’ I said, ‘do you speak of him like everyone else in the villa, in the past tense? As if he were dead?’

Rufus paused at the doorway to look at me for a moment. ‘Well, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Daedalus was an honourable man. If he was alive, he would have come back.’ And then he was gone himself.

I sat for a moment gazing after him. One thing I was now completely certain of. Crassus had possessed at least one mortal enemy in his household. Two, if you counted Faustina. I have moved, with Marcus, in some exalted circles but I have rarely seen more concentrated hatred than I had just seen on Rufus’ face. Whoever had done the murder, Rufus had wished Germanicus dead. ‘I never touched him,’ he had said, but he hadn’t denied the killing.

And he had been last actually to come out of the villa and he had missed much of the procession. I noticed, too, that he had evaded my question about where he had actually been.

I got up and looked around the sleeping space.

Slaves do not have many possessions. What they do have is usually hidden somewhere away from the buildings, in some hollow tree or buried in a spot which the hider devoutly hopes is secret — there is little privacy in the slaves’ quarters. Nevertheless, there are one or two places where it is always sensible to look. I knew them. I was once a slave myself.

I knelt down and buried my hand under the bed covering, among the pile of straw and reeds which was Rufus’ bed. At first I could feel nothing, and I was almost about to give up, when my fingers closed on something smooth and soft, wrapped with a leather thong. I drew it out.

A woven pouch. My fingers probed the cloth, but there were no coins in it. Rufus had spoken the truth about that. That was surprising. A lute player like Rufus might expect a few small coins at least, after playing at a banquet — from the guests, if not from his master. But there was no money here. I untied the thong, and opened the pouch.

There were two packets inside it, each wrapped in a small folded piece of cloth. One held a lock of reddish hair — long, curled, and dyed. Perfumed, too. Faustina’s almost certainly. The other was a surprise. There was a wisp of hair in that, too: short, dark, coarse and curly. Not more than a hair or two, and no longer than my thumbnail, but carefully wrapped as though each single strand was precious.

I squatted back on my heels and looked at it. Not a second girl, surely? Rufus was too much in love for that. A sister or mother, perhaps? No, it didn’t look like a woman’s hair. His father’s then? But what was he doing with his father’s hair hidden in his mattress? It made no sense at all.

There was a movement at the doorway, and I wrapped the pouch quickly together again and stuffed it back where I had found it. But no one came in.

I waited. Still nothing happened. I felt that prickling sensation on my scalp again.

I went to the door and looked out. Nothing. Only the distant slaves still loading the last of the logs onto the farm cart. It was unnerving.

I glanced back up the sleeping room. No, I told myself, I was imagining things. I must do the second thing I had come for — glance into Andretha’s room while I was here. ‘A hoarder’ Aulus had called him. It would be interesting to see what he was hoarding.

I walked slowly down the room. On the way, though, my eye was caught by a small chest-cupboard beside one of the beds. It belonged to Paulus, obviously: there was the strigil and the oil still on the carrying-tray on top. I paused.

A noise. I whirled around, but too late. All I saw was the flutter of a tunic at the doorway, and the room was still again. But there was no doubt of it. I was being watched.

Well, if they came again I would be ready. I went over deliberately and opened the cupboard. It was not fastened. There was nothing of interest there, simply the tools of his trade.

I glanced behind me. The room was still empty. I knelt down quickly, intending to rummage in the bed straw, as I had done earlier further down the room.

Then something hit me hard on the back of the head. I had a confused sensation of pitching forwards, and that was that.