The Ghosts of Glevum

XVI

Sosso exchanged glances with Molendinarius and then looked at me. ‘Not convincing, citizen,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a slave. He was a slave. Saw the rest of him.’

‘His body was lying in the pit. I found it,’ Lercius interrupted eagerly. ‘When I found the beans and nuts. There were just some branches pulled back over him.’

‘Had there been a struggle? Were there other wounds?’

‘Not a scratch,’ Lercius replied. And then with a relish which I found difficult to tolerate, ‘I had a good look. There was a lot of blood. It must have come spurting from his neck. We found where it was done, as well. Blood all over one end of the hut and some on the axe. I thought at first that what was on the blade was only chicken blood, but when we found the two bits of slave we realised. .’

Sosso gave him a look that silenced him, and said, ‘A slave. Slave brand, slave tunic, slave token round his neck.’

‘A slave,’ I hastened to explain, ‘but not my own. He was my patron’s bucket-boy. He was afraid he would be taken in for questioning.’ I gave them a brief outline of how Golbo had run away to me, but did not mention that his testimony appeared to question Marcus’s innocence. If these men were going to assist me to clear my patron’s name, I reasoned, it was better if they had no cause for doubt. ‘I left him sleeping by the dye-house fire,’ I finished. ‘When I came back in the morning, he was gone. I haven’t seen him since.’

‘He can’t have gone far,’ the woman put in unexpectedly. She had walked over to the cart and was inspecting its grisly burden with a kind of horrified curiosity, though she must have seen a severed head before. Those of rebellious tribesmen are still occasionally exhibited when there have been border skirmishes — though admittedly they are not usually dyed. ‘Perhaps he was hiding in the thatch, and one of the soldiers found him and killed him after all.’

‘Keep silence, wife!’ The firewood-seller’s voice was sharp. ‘Haven’t I told you I was watching them throughout? You think I would have missed it, if one of the guards had dragged a headless torso from the hut?’

She turned aside, subdued, and began moving the fleeces and other goods inside, but his words had given me to think. ‘If it was not the soldiers,’ I said hastily, ‘who could it have been? You say you watched them leave? When did you leave yourself?’

Junio would have seen the implication of those words at once. I suspected that Molendinarius had gone to loot the house, so it was possible that — if disturbed in the attempt — he’d killed the slave himself. After all, he was skilful with an axe. However, the old man seemed not to have thought of that.

He answered in that croaking rasp which I was beginning to associate with him. ‘When the soldiers left, I followed them down the road a bit, to make sure that they were safely gone, and when I came back I found the fire was out. The living hut was gone but the other one was hardly touched. That surprised me, I confess — I came straight back here to tell my wife.’

‘And to pick up your handcart?’ I suggested, suddenly understanding the answer to part of the mystery at least. ‘You must have thought there were some things of value there.’

He was unabashed. ‘Well, citizen, if they were out to arrest you with your patron, I didn’t suppose that you were ever coming back. And the guards posted round the villa weren’t watching out for thieves. I knew there would be something in the hut. Better we had it than somebody else, I thought.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘But you were prepared to share it with Sosso and his men?’

This time he did colour slightly as he said in his breathless rasp, ‘It wasn’t what I meant to do, but when I got back home to pick up the cart, I found them here with you. And — you never know — I might need Sosso and his men one day. I told them all about it. We decided there were far too many people for this hut, and anyway it wasn’t safe to stay here in your company, in case the soldiers thought to search the place. So after I’d had a piece of bread and broth, the two of them came back to bed down there with me. You were so fast asleep you didn’t stir. We left one man to keep an eye on you. It was a risk, but Cornovacus was certain that he could get away, even if the guard turned up, and let us know.’

I glanced towards the woman, who was stooping at that moment to pick up the heavy loom-weights from the ground, but she did not react in the least to this assumption that she and I were automatically dispensable. All she did was look up briefly and say, ‘Anyway, you had no choice. Sosso had a knife.’

Her husband grunted at her to be silent and turned to me. ‘We had no means of making fire, which was fortunate, or we might have boiled that head up again, and then we’d never have known whose head it was.’ He nodded towards the gruesome thing on the cart. I wished he’d cover it, the more so as Lercius was edging up to it with a fascinated grin and extending a probing finger towards Golbo’s eyes.

His eyes! Of course! If the eyes were still intact, no one could actually have boiled the head.

‘Don’t you see?’ I said, aware of the impatience in my tone. (This was a little unfair of me, since I’d only just worked it out myself.) ‘That head was never boiled — though that was probably the murderer’s idea. It was put into the pot after the fire was doused. So it could not have been the soldiers, as you say.’ I went on in a more conciliatory tone, ‘So who killed the slave, and why?’

‘One of the other accursed sons of Dis — those soldiers who were posted in the lane?’ That was Cornovacus, who had been following the talk with interest. ‘The woman says they’re from the garrison. Those boys would chop the head off anyone.’

I shook my head. ‘That would make no sense. They wanted to arrest Golbo, not kill him.’ I sighed. It seemed I would have to explain this, after all. ‘He was the last person in the colonnade when Praxus died. That was why he ran away. He feared his testimony would harm his master’s case. If the guards had caught him, surely they would have captured him and taken him in to the garrison for questioning. Then they could have extorted the evidence they want.’

‘Perhaps it was a warning,’ Molendinarius said. ‘That people should not get involved in this.’

‘Then why move the body?’ I returned. ‘Put the head into the pot, perhaps — that is a kind of warning, I suppose — but why take the trouble to drag away the rest of it, and hide it in the pit? More effective, surely, to leave it where it was?’

‘He’s right, by Mithras,’ Cornovacus said. ‘Almost as if whoever did it didn’t want it found. I’ve never known soldiers do anything like that. Those sons of rats and vermin haven’t got the wit. If they’d found the boy, they’d either have killed him where he stood or dragged him off to torture him.’

I was following a different line of thought. ‘I wonder why Golbo let himself be found? If he’d been hiding in the thatch, I suppose he might have come down when the other hut caught fire — but if so the soldiers would have caught him, or Molendinarius would know. More likely he was hiding in the trees nearby. So why come out?’

Lercius grinned. ‘To save the hut. I told you somebody had doused it all. It didn’t do itself.’ He bent forward and grinned into the dead face. ‘Why don’t you tell him? Lost your tongue?’ He would have opened up the mouth and peered inside, if Cornovacus had not prevented him.

I turned away revolted, but I had to concede the point. It did seem likely that Golbo had tried to save the dye-hut, otherwise the fire would have caught it too. It was too near the roundhouse to escape. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I said, and Lercius preened. ‘When he was sure that everyone had gone, he went inside and doused the fire. So Golbo was killed later, when the fire was out. But the axe was there. You used the thing yourself. Why didn’t he use it to defend himself?’

It was the firewood-seller’s turn to let impatience show. ‘Who knows? Thought it was you, perhaps. Or maybe somebody crept up on him.’

That was a possibility, of course. Yet, remembering the evidence, I found it difficult to believe. When the slave had come to me he had been too frightened to remain there overnight, though then he was comparatively safe. If he had been in the hut alone last night, surely he would have been nervous and alert and kept that axe beside him all the time? Indeed, on past evidence, at the slightest noise he would have tried to run away unless his assailant overpowered him at once. Yet there was no evidence on that discoloured head of any kind of bruise or scratch that might suggest a struggle. No fear in the expression on the face. If anything, it wore a look of disbelief.

‘Must have been somebody very strong,’ Lercius put in admiringly. ‘Took the head off with a single stroke. Neat as a scythe-blade through the corn.’

That aspect of things had not occurred to me, but when I turned unwillingly to look again, it was obvious that Lercius was right. The head had been chopped off as smoothly as though a butcher had cut through a slice of meat. My axe is sharp enough, but it is heavy. Whoever wielded that blow had been a man of considerable strength. That suggested Bullface and his men, despite what Molendinarius had said.

‘That blow would be difficult to do,’ Molendinarius said, with a sort of professional dispassion. ‘Unless the boy had his head down on the floor. Or else his attacker towered over him. Have to get just the right angle to get it off like that.’

I looked at him again. He was, by his own account, the last person at the scene before Sosso arrived, and the one who had first found the head. Though he dealt chiefly in kindling wood he obviously had expertise with chopping instruments. Though he wheezed and grunted as he breathed and was as thin as bones, could he have done the deed if he had sufficient skill? I shook my head. He lacked the guile to be a murderer and talk so freely of how it was done.

Why should he kill Golbo anyway? For that matter, why should anyone? Just to loot the place? It seemed unlikely. Up to now, when faced with any sort of threat, Golbo’s first thought had been to run away. ‘Unless,’ I thought suddenly, ‘it was someone he recognised, and had no reason to be frightened of.’ I was startled to find that I had said the words aloud.

The others stared at me in astonishment, but the woman had followed what I meant. ‘Perhaps what my husband said was right. He did think it was you. Then he would not look to arm himself. Or if not you, then someone else he knew.’

I glanced at Molendinarius. Was that a possibility? Someone from the villa had arrived, instructed to silence Golbo at all costs, and so protect the master? That seemed even more improbable. There were guards posted up and down the lane expressly so that no one could go in or out. Except Cilla, I remembered guiltily. She was a big girl — was she strong enough to wield the axe? Supposing that she had been the one who called by at the hut? Would she have done it for Marcus. Or for Julia?

I could imagine it. Golbo in the shadows by the fire, looking up nervously as she came in. He had no reason to be afraid of her: he knew her, they had been slaves together in the villa, so he would not think to run away or reach for the axe. On the contrary, he might have smiled, asked her in, invited her to tell him what the news was from the house, even — perhaps — turned away and bent over the water bowl to offer her a drink. And she moving behind him, putting a hand out for the axe, and. . It was an unpleasant picture, and I shut it out.

I turned to Sosso. ‘Can we discover if anyone went down the lane last night?’ I asked, without much confidence.

He thought a moment. ‘Parva. Best one to find out. Go fetch her, Cornovacus.’ This was delivered in a series of short grunts. Then he grinned at me. ‘Got to get inside that villa, haven’t we? Food and money first, work afterwards.’

It wasn’t at all what we’d agreed, but I was ready to assent to anything. ‘Then I can send a message to my patron’s wife,’ I said, looking round unavailingly for something to scratch a message on. The others watched me uncomprehendingly. In the end I snatched up a smoothish piece of wood from the woodpile beside the hut and roughly scrawled I need four denarii urgently. Libertus on it with a charred stick from the fire.

I gave it to Sosso. ‘Give this to the lady Julia,’ I said. ‘She’ll know it comes from me.’

‘What is it?’ He rubbed at it doubtfully.

‘Don’t do that,’ I said. ‘You’ll smudge the writing out. How will you get your four denarii if she can’t read my note?’

He looked at it again. ‘It’s writing?’

I nodded, and the others crowded round to look. It had not occurred to me, although it should have done, that none of them could read. Even the ex-miller came to see.

‘I can do numbers,’ he said proudly. Sosso gave him the piece of wood. He looked at it intently, upside down. Then he gave it back and shrugged. ‘But not this fancy stuff.’ He turned away.

Sosso looked at me. ‘What does it say?’

I read it to him. He shook his head.

‘Not good enough. We don’t have anyone who can read — not even Parva, though she was slave-girl in a wealthy house until she caught the pox. How do we know you’re not betraying us?’

‘How do I know you’re not betraying me?’ I said. ‘You could give this to the soldiers in the lane. I’ve got as much to lose as you, I think.’

He returned it gravely. ‘True. All the same, can’t take that. Too big. Not going through the gates, you know.’ He permitted himself an ugly little grin. ‘Not this time, anyway.’

I gazed at him in consternation. ‘Then how can I send a message.’

He smiled again, showing his blackened broken stumps. ‘We’ll tell her. And four denarii is not enough. How you going to pay us from now on? Can’t get into the villa every night.’

I was ashamed to realise I’d not thought of that, but I said in a lofty tone of voice, ‘But surely, we must leave a note somehow, for her to find. You can’t walk up to her and talk to her. For one thing you’ll be seen, and for another you’ll frighten her out of her mind — she’s never heard of you, and won’t believe I’ve sent you. Why should she? She probably thinks I’m in the jail by now. Or dead.’ All that was true, I thought. This enterprise seemed more hopeless by the hour.

Sosso thought about that a moment. ‘Is there something she’d recognise?’ he grunted. ‘A ring? A brooch? Got anything like that?’

‘Not any more,’ I said, with some asperity. ‘I had an oyster spoon that would have served. Her husband gave it to me, but you demanded it.’

He frowned. ‘Pity Cornovacus has already gone,’ he said, and for the first time I realised that he had. One moment the man was standing at my side, the next he had simply disappeared. I had heard Sosso give him the command, but I had not registered movement or sound of any sort. No wonder the rat-faced man was a successful thief. ‘Have to be this, after all.’ He looked down at the stick again. He had been fondling it in his hand all this while and it was smudged past reading now.

I sighed, and was looking round for something else — even a thin piece of bark to strip — when the woman plucked softly at my arm. ‘Citizen, I’ve got something here. That slave-girl left it yesterday. She swore me to secrecy, but it’s possible that you could write something on it.’

She led the way into the hut, bent down on her creaking knees and rummaged painfully around under the loose reeds of the bed. ‘I was to hide it well, and if anybody came and waited at one special place — she told me where — I was to give it to them. Her mistress would pay me handsomely if I did, she said. That’s why my husband was loitering near the lane last night. But no one came. Only the soldiers who burned down your house, and a slave-messenger from the Glevum garrison. But none of them stopped where she had said.’ She frowned, kneeled up, and then resumed her searching with the other hand. ‘Ah, here it is. I don’t know if it’s any use. It might be. It’s used for writing things, I think.’

She was holding a wax writing tablet in her hand.