The Ghosts of Glevum

XVIII

Sosso and Lercius were moving so quickly through the woods that I was in danger of losing sight of them myself. There was little foliage to screen them at this time of year, but already the two men were half lost among the trees. I hurried after them, ploughing through the fallen leaves and dodging the bare branches that whipped at my face. I was panting hard when I caught up with them.

Despite his warning earlier, I had vaguely supposed that Sosso was going to lead the way towards my roundhouse and the pit where Golbo’s body lay, simply avoiding the main paths where there might be guards. But as we struggled through drifts of rotting leaves and over rutted, muddy tracks I realised that this was not the case.

We came to a fallen tree a little bigger than the rest, and suddenly he veered sharply to the right, as if this was a marker on a predetermined course. He led us quickly to a place where the trees were decidedly less dense, and I saw that we were coming out on to the lane: not near the corner where my enclosure was, but some way short of that, where the old road skirted Marcus’s estate, uncomfortably close to where I had yesterday failed to meet Cilla as arranged.

However, we did not take the track. Close to the outer limit of the trees, Sosso made a sudden sign that I should stand still and wait. I did.

He gestured to his right, and I saw what he had seen. A guard, chainmail and helmet glittering, was pacing up and down the lane not very far away. The forest-side border of the lane at this point was a grassy bank, with only a few trees dotted here and there — tall, so that all their branches were high up, and they provided little cover if one wished to hide. The outer wall of Marcus’s land formed the other boundary of the lane. If we were spotted, there was nowhere much to run. I was uneasy, fearing that we’d walked into a trap.

I looked around for Lercius, but could see no sign of him. I tugged at Sosso’s tunic, and mouthed urgently, ‘What’s happened to the boy?’

Sosso placed a finger to his ugly lips and signalled me to look into the trees, above the soldier’s head. There, in the twisted branches of an oak, was Lercius. He had scaled it, swift and noiseless as a rat — though the lower branches had been lopped — and now he was hiding in a fork. I began to understand his value to the gang. Many a performing athlete could not have done so much.

Once I had seen him, however, he seemed hopelessly conspicuous. There was very little foliage on the tree. One glance in the wrong direction from the guard and the boy must inevitably be seen. I turned to Sosso, frowning.

Sosso smiled. Then, opening his hand, he showed me two stones that he’d picked up earlier. They were a fair weight — each perhaps half the size of my clenched fist, but he held them easily. Then, as I watched, he raised one arm and with a single smooth movement hurled one of the stones as far as possible. It flew as though it were a pebble, away from Lercius and the guard, and hit the wall at an angle, rebounded with a clatter, and bounced down the track. The soldier turned. One could almost see him furrowing his brow as he put one hand on his sword-hilt and took a few steps forward, peering down the lane.

What happened next was so quick that it seemed a blur. Sosso took aim with the second stone, and at the same instant seized my makeshift robe and thrust me back against a tree where I was out of view. I heard the impact as the missile hit the wall, and bounced in fragments on the stony path. From my hiding place I saw the soldier draw his sword.

‘Stop in the name of Rome. Who’s there?’ He came a little further down the lane. By now he was within a pace or two of us.

My heart thudded, thinking we’d been seen, but he blundered past and went on in the direction of the sound. As he did so I saw Lercius shimmy out across a branch and drop, lightly as a cat, on to the top of Marcus’s orchard wall. In another instant he was out of sight.

Relief almost betrayed me. I was ready to make a clumsy run for it, but Sosso had more sense. He touched my arm and motioned me urgently to stay where I was, and a moment later the guard came back again, shaking his head.

We waited for what seemed to me an age. The soldier took up his post and sheathed his sword again, but he was still peering suspiciously about. We lay where we were. I could hear my heart thudding, so loudly that I was sure the guard would hear, and my limbs ached with holding one position for so long. Even my breath came so hard that it seemed to drown out the gentle rustle of the wind in the trees and the coo of a pigeon, which were the only other sounds.

At last, when the soldier had relaxed and resumed his pacing up and down the lane, Sosso made his move. Choosing the moment when the guard’s patrol routine took him the maximum distance from us up the lane, my companion beckoned me and led the way noiselessly back into the trees.

I lurched upright and stumbled after him but I did not have his skill and I was aware of every rustle and the creak my flapping sandal made. Then I stepped upon a branch and heard it crack. I looked round, fearing that the guard had heard it too.

He had. He had drawn his sword and started after us. ‘In the name of Commodus Britannicus, Divine Emperor of Rome and all its provinces, come out and show yourself!’

I slowed, ready to obey, but Sosso flashed me his blackened ugly smile. ‘Not you!’ he murmured, and turned back himself, loping to the path with his lopsided gait. He purposely exaggerated the limp, and held his head on one side and his mouth ajar, with his arms held up by his sides.

‘Urgh! Urgh! Alms!’ I heard him croaking, ‘Urgh! Jove’s name! Urgh!’

That was a clever move. There is a widespread belief among worshippers of the Roman deities that among the crazed are those who have been touched by a supernatural hand and thus enjoy special protection from the gods. Soldiers are notoriously superstitious, of course and — since they are required to make oaths and sacrifices to Jupiter and Mars, whatever other religions they profess — Sosso was clearly assuming a kind of moral shield by calling on the name of the father of the gods and looking as lunatic as possible. If my life had not depended on the stratagem, it would have made me laugh.

It was successful, too. From where I was hiding in the woods, I could see the soldier backing off. ‘Go on! Be off! Don’t come close to me!’ He held his sword up warningly. ‘I’ve heard of you. You live the other side of Glevum, out among the tombs. What are you doing here?’

Sosso lurched closer to him. ‘Birds! Eat!’ he grunted, in a tone so horrible and slavering that even I shuddered, though I knew what the soldier could not guess — that this ugly, harmless little ‘idiot’ was in fact a natural leader capable of lightning thought and complex plans.

Indeed, I realised, I was witnessing one now. Allowing me to alert the guard had been no accident, and Sosso was talking to the man not merely to protect me, as I’d half supposed. Behind the soldier, on the orchard wall, I saw a hand appear, and then another, followed first by Lercius’s face and shoulders and then — with a swift upward push — by his body too.

Sosso loped closer to the guard, leering horribly. ‘Alms!’ he said again, making as if to paw the soldier’s arm.

The man stepped backwards. ‘I ought to take you under arrest,’ he muttered, but he dropped his sword. He was clearly nervous, though, and watching Sosso like a hawk. ‘Go on, get out of here, before I change my mind.’ Behind him Lercius ran along the wall and dropped to safety further up the path. I saw him scuttle silently across the lane and disappear into the woods on my side of the track.

Sosso must have seen him too. He gave one last, mock-despairing ‘Urgh!’ and then turned away. He loped towards me, turning off the path and ploughing through the moist brown undergrowth. This time he made no effort to be quiet. The guard watched him till he reached the shelter of the trees, then went back to pacing up and down the lane.

I must have made a bit of noise myself as I joined Sosso in retreat, but the soldier did not glance our way again. I had enough sense not to speak until we reached the fallen tree once more and were well out of earshot of the guard. Lercius was already there, sitting on the jagged stump and grinning like a frog.

Sosso nodded at him. ‘Succeed?’

‘It was easy, except for a pair of alarm geese that tried to hiss at me, but I managed to take care of them. I just dropped in among the bushes at the back and it was only a moment before a servant came along. It was a slave-girl, come to feed the geese.’

‘She didn’t scream?’ I said, trying to imagine what the poor girl must have felt, unexpectedly accosted in her owner’s private orchard by an unknown ragged man, who — knowing Lercius — most likely had an evil smile on his face, and a horribly dead goose in either hand.

Lercius grinned wider. ‘She didn’t get a chance. I came round behind her and covered up her mouth — then I showed her that wax writing tablet thing you gave to me. She didn’t struggle after that, so I put it in her hand and let her go. I think she was the one who brought it out, and once she saw it she accepted me. I didn’t even have to squeeze her very much,’ he added, with a suspicion of regret. He looked at Sosso proudly. ‘I told her what you said I was to say.’

‘No soldiers?’ Sosso said, ignoring this.

Lercius shook his head. ‘There are only two soldiers in that whole new annexe part — or so the slave-girl said. There were more to start with but apparently the owner’s wife made quite a fuss. Told the officer in charge that she didn’t want soldiers leering at her as she walked about, and demanded to have the women’s quarters to herself.’

I could scarcely suppress a smile at this. It was typical of Julia, I thought. It would be a strong man who could resist her pleas, if she looked demurely up at him under her beautiful brows as she smiled bravely and told him how distressed she was. I could imagine her deploying her considerable charms upon the centurion in charge. Julia was very skilled at obtaining her own way. ‘So the officer agreed?’ I said.

Lercius nodded. ‘That’s what comes of having looks and money, I suppose. For the lady they relaxed the guard. Inside that part of the house at least. Only those two guards posted at the exits now.’

Sosso had been listening closely. ‘And the rest?’

‘A dozen or so in the main part of the house, so the slave-girl says. When they come off duty, that is where they go. They’ve found the amphorae of wine that are sunk into the kitchen yard by now — judging by the noise they make, apparently. Otherwise, they’re watching at the gates and patrolling round the walls, to stop people getting in and out.’ He grinned again. ‘They’re not expecting trouble. The two that were in that women’s area were strolling up and down, not taking any notice of what went on. I glimpsed them when I was struggling with the geese. I’d thought they would discover me for sure — one of the stupid things did flap and squawk just once before I silenced it. But they scarcely glanced my way — too busy talking to one another.’ He winked. ‘Complaining about how boring it was, I expect. They didn’t even notice that there weren’t any pigeons about, when I gave you the signal that I was coming back.’

So that was how Sosso had known when to make his move. I was impressed. I’d registered the sound myself, but it had seemed so natural that it had not occurred to me that anything but a bird was making it.

‘And did you get the money?’ I enquired.

Lercius looked at me in surprise. ‘Money?’

‘I asked Julia for those four denarii,’ I said.

‘She’ll give you that herself, I expect,’ Lercius said. ‘When you go in.’

‘When I. .?’ I looked at Sosso sharply. There was no way I could do what Lercius had done.

The dwarf just laughed, enjoying my obvious bewilderment. ‘That’s right. Give it to you then. More, if she’s got any sense.’ He was revelling in this, taunting me with hints, so it was clearly useless to ask anything outright. He gave another ugly little smile. ‘Remember your promise. Money every day. Or. .’ He made that slitting gesture once again, and turned to Lercius. ‘You told her?’

‘I did. I said I did.’ Lercius was indignant. ‘Everything you told me, all about the cart, and bringing all the stuff in for the farm. At least I told the slave-girl. She said she’d tell her mistress and it would be arranged. I was lucky there. She knew this citizen.’ He turned to me. ‘You know the one. A chubby girl, with great big. .’ He made gleeful grasping motions with his hands.

‘Enough!’ Sosso interrupted him. ‘But well done! Extra chicken stew for you. Come on.’ He did not pause, but led the way into the trees again, and once more I found myself following him blindly, as if I were the stranger in these woods and he had walked the paths for years. He moved so quickly that there was no more time for talk, and I struggled after him until (rather to my surprise, I confess) we branched out of the trees again and found ourselves in the clearing where the firewood-seller had his hut.