The Ghosts of Glevum

XIV

I awoke to thin winter sunshine streaming on to my face, and the chatter of excited voices somewhere nearby. At first I could not work out where I was, but as I moved my head — slowly, because my neck was very stiff — and took in my surroundings, the events of the night before came back to me.

The pathetic nature of the hut was much more evident in the light of day — the bunch of reeds and skins on which I lay, a few tools, a single stool, a pot, and the row of little clay bowls by the wall. There was a rough log serving as a bench, on which rested a jug of water, a few herbs, a crust of bread and two battered cups — that was the extent of the possessions here. And yet these people, with a roof and fire of their own, talked about days when ‘times were hard’ and knew that they were fortunate compared to some.

Cornovacus was still there, sitting at his post by the door, but when I looked for the old woman she was nowhere to be seen. It occurred to me to wonder where she’d slept since there was no sign of bedding anywhere, and then realised — as I should have done before — that she must simply have curled up in her cloak beside the fire. She’d given up the only bed to me.

What rich citizen, I asked myself, would have done as much?

As if she’d heard my thoughts she hobbled in, a dead hen dangling by its feet from either hand, and her wizened face lit in a toothless smile. ‘Ah, Citizen Libertus, you are awake at last. Don’t try to move. You have slept well but you still need to rest.’ She shook the chickens at me. ‘But see what Lercius has brought us from your house. A good broth of one of these and you’ll soon be on the mend.’

‘From my house!’ The brazenness of it made me sit upright.

Or try to sit upright. The instant I moved, I fell back on the bedding with a groan. Instead of being a creature with mobile arms and limbs I seemed to be one solid throbbing ache, as stiff as if I had been thrashed from head to foot. I had endured some savage beatings when I was first a slave, but not even they had left me feeling as weak and battered as this. I could scarcely turn my head and, although I could hear someone else coming through the open door, I could not twist myself enough to see.

‘I wrung their necks. You should have heard them squawk!’ It was Lercius. He burst into my view, his face alight with frank, unholy glee. He had his right hand concealed behind his back, but now he had my attention he brought it out to display a bloodied bundle in a bag. ‘This one’s even better. I cut off its head. Crunch, I went. Sosso let me. I used your axe. And it went on running a bit even afterwards, when it had no head. Blood was pouring from its neck. This one is for us — we’re going to cook it on the fire tonight.’ He thrust his hand into the bag and brandished the unhappy, headless thing.

My first thought was outrage. That was my old cloth bag he was carrying and those were obviously my chickens he had killed! It was outright robbery, and I was about to voice my anger when the old woman spoke.

‘I’m glad you found something at the house to save.’

‘To save?’ By now I was propped up on my arm, bruises or not. ‘You mean the soldiers may have looted it?’

She paused a moment, then turned back to me. ‘Lie back, citizen, and try to rest. There is nothing you can do. Oh, Great Minerva! I had not meant to tell you this so soon. But I suppose you’ll have to know. When the soldiers came, they waited for a while, but when it was clear that you weren’t in the house they went inside. .’ She hesitated.

‘And looted it?’ I could imagine it only too well.

She shook her head. ‘They went with torches. Claimed they were searching it, my husband says — though you can believe that if you like. At all events, the thatch caught fire and, quite simply, the house burned to the ground. They didn’t make much effort to try to put it out.’

I did lie down then, as if someone had knocked me down. Of course I didn’t believe the story of the search. Those men had put a torch to it, though since they knew I was a citizen no doubt they thought the lie expedient. The punishment for convicted arsonists is fierce. However, it would be hard to bring a charge, even in ordinary times. This was neither a warehouse nor inside the town, and anyway it is always difficult to make a case against the guard. And these were no ordinary times.

My roundhouse! The beloved little house that we’d rebuilt ourselves, using woven branches in the fashion of the local tribes. We and our slaves had woven osiers round the stakes, and daubed the walls with mud and dung to keep out the searching wind and rain. Gwellia had cut and tied the bundled straw that formed the roof, had flattened the earth floor with patient hands and laid the firestones for the central fire. It was more than just a dwelling, it was a work of love, a symbol of our new-found hope and life. All reduced to ashes by a Roman torch. I have never felt so bitter against our conquerors.

‘All burned?’ I said. I thought about my workshop in the town, similarly gutted and destroyed. Fires were common enough happenings, of course — inevitable when there’s thatch and naked flame — but both of those conflagrations had been deliberate. The Fates seemed to have placed a peculiar curse on any building which I called my home.

She shook her head. ‘I think so, citizen. Or so my husband says. One of the soldiers chased him off at first, but when they’d left at last he did go back again.’

‘Left these though,’ Lercius said happily, swinging the hapless corpse.

‘Where did you find them?’ I enquired. I moved with exaggerated care, so that I was able to lean up on one arm.

‘The chickens? They were roosting in a tree. The coop had been pushed over and they’d escaped. But I got up and caught them!’ Lercius laughed. ‘Woosh — like that. I was too quick for them. They couldn’t get away. After I’d killed them, I put them in the bag. I found that in the lane. It was hanging on a bush — there were some things in it. I brought them too. Sosso says they might be worth something in the market place.’

He reached into the bag again — it was an old one that I’d once used for tools but discarded because it was split and frayed around the seam — and produced a stained, patched cloth which had once been a cloak and a pair of sandals with a broken lace. I frowned.

‘You say you found these hanging on a bush?’

But Lercius had lost interest, and it was the woman who replied. ‘He’s right. The bag was in the lane. I saw it there myself when I went out to see a customer before you came. It was just dangling from a tree. I almost picked it up myself, but I thought that someone must have dropped it on the road and would be back for it. You wouldn’t think that anyone would simply toss it there because they’d no use for it any more. Imagine throwing things like that away — a useful piece of cloth like that, and sandals which would be nearly good as new if you could afford a visit to the shoemaker.’

‘They’re mine,’ I said. I felt rebuked. I had put them on one side myself, admittedly to use as rags or scraps, but I had effectively discarded them. I’d stuffed them in the bag and hung them from a nail in Gwellia’s dyeing-house. So how had they survived the fire, and what were they doing in the lane, hanging on a bush? Perhaps the soldiers had been looting things and thrown this away in disgust as useless junk. Unless. .

Of course! Junio! I had told him to leave a signal near the gate. This must be it. That bag would have drawn my eye all right. But. . I frowned again. He was to warn me if the guards were at the house — yet according to what I’d heard last night, my wife and slaves had gone before the soldiers came.

However, this was no time for mysteries. These had been garments once. They were not glamorous at best, and they had not been improved by recent contact with the bleeding chicken corpse, but — as the woman said — they could, in an emergency, be used again. And it had dawned on me that they seemed to be the only clothes I had. I had glanced around the hut and noted all the contents earlier, but — surely? — I hadn’t seen my tunic, or the sack, or even the leather underpants I’d had on when I arrived. I hitched myself painfully a little more upright and checked again. There was no sign of them.

‘Let me have those things. They’re mine. I can clothe myself at least.’

Lercius ignored me utterly. I looked towards the woman, but she was pouring water into a pot and setting it to heat up on the firestones. She did not look at me.

I sat up fully now, clutching the skins against my goose-greased chest. ‘What’s happened to the rest of my possessions from the roundhouse?’ I enquired.

‘Possessions, citizen?’ said another voice. There was little room inside the hut by now, but by craning painfully around, I could see Sosso standing at the entrance. He had another bloodied bundle on his back, wrapped up in what looked like my sack of yesterday — the remainder of my chickens, probably. He tossed it down outside the door and loped over to squat down at my side. The ugly face was twisted in a leer. ‘You’ve no possessions from the roundhouse, citizen. There’s nothing left of it.’

It was clear, at least, where last night’s clothes had gone. He was sporting, not only my now misshapen shoes, but my tunic too — stretching the seams across the chest and shoulders so that the stitching in some places had already given way. The arrogance of his words and manner had me spluttering and I wanted to stand up and confront him face to face. But he had me at a curious disadvantage. It is hard to seem imposing in an argument when you are the only one with nothing on.

I stayed lying where I was. ‘Those are my things,’ I repeated, aware that I sounded like a fretful child. ‘My bag, my cloak, my sandals, and — for that matter — those are my chickens too!’

‘Not any more.’ The ugly face was twisted in a leer. ‘Citizen! I hear you are a citizen?’

I nodded, knowing that would not endear me to the gang.

‘Then listen, citizen. You owe us four denarii.’

Another nod. I didn’t trust my voice.

‘Tunic and chickens — first part-payment — understood?’

‘And you’ll pay the rest, by Mercury.’ Cornovacus had risen to his feet. ‘You’re an accursed white-rober — you’ll have money somewhere. White-robers always do. You’ll tell us where, or I’ll squeeze it out of you.’ He spat. He was not a big man — he was tall and thin — but in this small hut the effect was truly frightening. And I had no money anywhere of any kind. Ordinarily I would have applied to Marcus, but he was in the cells.

‘But. .’ I began and stopped. It was useless to protest. I had agreed to pay in front of witnesses — they had a verbal contract under law. Even Roman justice was no longer on my side. Not that I thought Sosso would bother with the courts. No doubt he had his own methods of enforcing debts.

I was right.

‘You’ll pay, citizen. I’ll leave Cornovacus with you till you do. And Lercius too.’

Lercius, who had been happily dismembering his chicken with his hands, looked up at me and grinned. ‘Like this!’ He twisted off a leg. It was not a pleasant image, and his simple pleasure in it made it worse. I’d no doubt he would do the same to me with just as much delight. I was beginning to wish that Bullface had caught me after all.

I looked at the old woman for support, but she was careful to avoid my eyes. She had plunged one of the chickens in the pot — just as it was — and now she plucked it out and sat down on the stool, her fingers busy as she pulled the feathers from the skin. She kept her head down and said nothing, although I noticed that she still glanced nervously at the men from time to time. She was as terrified as I was of the gang.

I thought aloud. ‘I’m sure my patron’s wife would help me if she could — but I suppose there’s still a guard outside her house.’

The woman raised her head and looked at me through her wispy strands of hair, although her fingers never faltered in their task. ‘There is indeed. They’ve closed the back route from the villa now, by all accounts, so nobody can get in or out at all. They did let that serving girl come here last night before you came, to buy some comfrey for her mistress, but I don’t think they’ll let her come again. They almost didn’t let her last night. She had to plead with them for hours, she said, until they finally agreed to let her out.’

‘Cilla!’ I had completely forgotten her. I’d promised to meet her in the lane after my interview at the garrison, so that she could take news to Julia. Was that arrangement made only yesterday? After all the shocks and tribulations I’d endured since, that conversation seemed a half a life ago.

‘Is she called Cilla?’ The old face wrinkled in a frown. ‘I don’t think I ever heard her name. She often came here on her mistress’s behalf. Plump and plain-faced as a little pig, but pleasant and with more sense than you’d think.’

That sounded like Cilla.

‘I wonder what will become of her, poor thing,’ the woman said. ‘She told me the soldiers took another ten slaves away to question yesterday, and threatened to take another ten today. They’ll take her master’s slaves at first, of course, ’cause they were at the banquet, but it must be dreadful waiting there like that, not knowing when it’s going to be your turn. And now she’s made herself conspicuous. I don’t know why her mistress made her come — she wasn’t going to die for the want of a bit of comfrey, I’m sure.’

Poor Cilla. I knew why she’d taken such appalling risks. She’d kept her promise and talked her way past the guards to meet up with me. And I had missed her!

Together with my chance to send a message to the house. Julia would have been a good person to beg money from. I had no doubt that Marcus would have lent me four denarii if I asked — especially if I’d succeeded in obtaining his release — but he would certainly have deducted them from anything he paid me later on. He was more cautious with his money than a mother with her child. Julia, on the other hand, would probably have given them outright. That would, at least, have paid Sosso and his gang and left me to face the ruins of my life.

I was mentally bewailing my bad luck and deciding that I must have done something serious to offend the gods, when Sosso spoke. ‘So, you spoke the truth? Your patron is in jail.’ He turned to the firewood-seller’s wife, who by now was halfway through her task. ‘You know this Marcus?’

Little feathers had starting floating up and attaching themselves to her rags and face and hair. She had to rub her toothless mouth and wipe away one that was sticking to her lips before she answered, ‘Of course I do. And so would you, if you knew anything at all about town government. The most important man for miles he was — related to the old Emperor, they say, and a friend of the departing governor. Not that it seems to have done him any good. They’ve still dragged him off and clapped him in the cells — and put a guard upon his house so no one can get in or out of it.’

Sosso said nothing for a moment. He looked down at his misshapen feet and then at me. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he said at last, ‘We could.’

I didn’t understand. I goggled at him. ‘What?’

‘Get in. Some of us are very good at it.’

‘But there’s an armed guard. .’

That grin again. ‘There’s one outside the garrison. We get in there.’

And then at last my brain, which seemed to have rusted with the cold and damp, creaked into action. What had Grossus Fatbeard said to me? ‘I have ears and eyes across the town.’

If I could offer more than Grossus did, perhaps Sosso and his men would do the same for me. I could not show my face in town, or even hereabouts. Yet I needed to have news of my patron and, if possible, discover the truth about exactly what had occurred at the banquet. I had no idea at this moment how or where or from whom this information could be gleaned, but if I had someone to spy on my account there was at least a glimmering of a chance. After all, as the old woman had observed, ‘Who takes any notice of a beggar in the street?’ And if they had managed to get into the garrison. .

‘The garrison?’ I echoed.

He shrugged, as though there was nothing remarkable in that.

I hesitated. These were not the kind of men to trust. They were desperate and I guessed that they would sell their services to the highest bidder. They might yet betray me to Bullface and his men.

Then I looked around the hut. I was at their mercy now. I had nothing, not even any clothes to wear. If I did not do something, I would surely starve. My house was burned, my patron was in jail, and my wife and slaves were safely out of town. What had I to lose?

‘In that case, I have a plan for you. You get into the villa with a message for his wife, and I’ll have the four denarii for you. After that, I want “ears and eyes” around the town. If you bring me helpful news, I’ll see you’re paid.’

‘No tricks. No aediles?’ Sosso said, and I realised that he had worries of his own. Some of his associates were thieves. They could be betrayed to the authorities themselves.

‘None,’ I promised.

He looked at his shoes — my shoes — then at me again. He grunted his favourite question. ‘How much?’

‘I can’t tell you that. I don’t know how much I need to know, or how long this thing will take.’

Sosso stood his ground. ‘No good, citizen. How much?’

I tried again. If I could contrive to pay them by results, I thought, perhaps that would minimise the risk. ‘You find out what you can and come to me each day until the Ides. I’ll see that you get food and a sestertius every time — more if the information helps to get him free.’ It was the best solution I could think of at the time. I prayed that Julia would agree to it.

Sosso shook his head. ‘Food and a sestertius — all right. You get him out — we get half the reward he gives to you. Agreed?’

What could I say? It was unlikely Marcus would be freed. I would be lucky to keep out of jail myself. This might be my only chance. ‘Agreed,’ I muttered.

Sosso spat on one grimy paw and extended it to me. I was still clutching my tattered fur covering to myself, but I freed a hand and grasped his hairy one. I gasped as his powerful fingers crushed my own.

‘Partners!’ Sosso grinned. He seemed to come to life. ‘Lercius! His clothes.’

Lercius put down his bloodied plaything and brought me the bag. I took out my old cloak and looped it round myself like a sort of makeshift robe, then struggled from the covers and fastened on the broken sandals as best I might. I stood up shakily. I looked like a beggar myself, but I was so pleased to have even these tattered clothes that it was some moments before I glanced up at the three men and saw them watching me.

It struck me what strange confederates I had obtained. A rat-faced thief, a half-crazed child, and a lopsided dwarf! It seemed to please them, though. Lercius smiled and nodded cheerfully and even Cornovacus had allowed his face to break into a sort of doubtful grin. Sosso — in my tunic, belt and shoes — was beaming broadest of them all.

Only then did it occur to me that he had planned this outcome all along.