The Ghosts of Glevum

II

This announcement caused a considerable sensation, not least in my stomach, which lurched alarmingly. What would the notoriously self-important Mellitus think of this — an anonymous citizen being specifically asked to join Marcus, when the sub-procurator himself was overlooked? However, there was nothing for it but to go.

I did not remain anonymous for long. Heads turned as I shuffled from my humble corner place and threaded my way towards the door. Five tables, with three couches each, meant that even this fine triclinium was packed and forty-two pairs of eyes were fixed on me. Mellitus, in particular, was staring at me with undisguised hostility.

I attempted to make my exit as unobtrusive as I could, with a brief required bow in his direction as I went, but before I had reached the doorway he called after me.

‘Citizen?’ That was all he said, but what he meant was: Who in Mithras’ name are you, and why should you be summoned? I am the most important person here.

I made a proper obeisance, this time, as I replied, ‘My name is Longinius Flavius Libertus, Excellence. Marcus is my patron and he sometimes calls on me if there’s an. . incident.’ ‘Problem’ would have been a better word. That was another thing which worried me, in fact. If Marcus wanted me, there was something mysterious, and probably dangerous, afoot.

Mellitus looked even sourer than before, but he forced a little laugh. ‘I see. Well, if your skills are so much in demand, pray do not let a mere sub-procurator delay you any more. Don’t keep your patron waiting. Go.’

I went.

It was not difficult to see where I should go, even without the slave to lead me there. Outside in the colonnade there was a little crowd. Every spare slave from house and kitchen had evidently been called to bring torches to the scene, and they were clustered round the adjacent doorway with their backs to me, peering forward and holding their smoking lights aloft. The slave who had fetched me went ahead, parting their ranks to let me through, and a moment later I was standing outside the entrance to the vomitorium.

What met my eyes was not a pretty sight. Praxus was lying slumped across the bowl, his face submerged in that disgusting mess. His massive body blocked the entranceway, hairy legs emerging obscenely from the pale blue robe and protruding at an awkward angle into the passageway. Marcus had already squeezed past into the room, and now he looked up and gestured me to come.

It was not easy. I was obliged to step between Praxus’s feet — huge sandals with the hobnails uppermost — and over the enormous bulk that blocked the door, before I could edge into the narrow space to join my patron.

‘Libertus!’ he cried, before I could say anything. Clearly there was no time for ceremony. ‘I’ll need your help. I don’t know quite what’s happened here, but anyway we’ll have to move him first. I told the slaves to lift him, and several of them tried, but they can’t. There’s only room for one here at a time, and they can’t get round him to grasp him properly. See what you can do, Libertus, before it’s too late.’

I forbore to mention that it was clearly far too late already, or that — although Marcus could hardly be expected to lift Praxus up himself — I was also supposed to be a guest. However, I did suggest what the slaves would not have dared, that if Marcus were to move there would be more room to operate. He looked surprised. He didn’t seem to have thought of that himself: shock seemed to have robbed him of the power of thought, though there was a degree of sense in his request to me. As one who handles heavy blocks of stone I have some expertise in lifting things.

Marcus nodded at me distractedly. ‘I had to come and see what had happened. Have this, if it’s any use to you.’ He passed me the brass pot that had contained the goose feathers, which he’d been clasping to him like a talisman. ‘Perhaps you could also. .’ He gestured towards the bowl.

Praxus’s banqueting wreath had unwound itself and fallen off. It was floating bizarrely by his ear on the malodorous pool of half-digested delicacies and regurgitated wine. It seemed an odd thing to be concerned about, but these symbols are important to patrician Roman men.

It was my turn to nod. ‘In just a moment, Excellence.’ I put down the pot and waited until my patron had edged past me and picked his way distastefully back to the corridor, where Mellitus and half the company of guests — who had by this time followed me — were openly assembled, craning to peer in. Curiosity had evidently got the better of good manners in the end.

I endeavoured to ignore my audience and position myself for the lift by planting one foot on either side of what was, by now, undoubtedly a corpse. I had planned to slide my hands round underneath the arms: but, as Marcus had correctly observed, that was impossible — not only because of the angle at which Praxus lay, but also because my toga would not permit me to straddle that huge girth. I was obliged to give up in the end, and try to raise him from the side.

There was evidence of previous attempts to do this when I moved the drapes of his synthesis aside. A red line of bruise ran round the neck, under the edge of that ridiculous blue robe, and the material at one point had parted in a jagged tear, as if someone had grasped the cloth there in struggling to lift him up, and it had given way beneath the weight. I did not want to make the same mistake. I laced my hands round underneath his neck and hauled.

To no avail. I only succeeded in raising the head and shoulders an inch or two. Try as I would, I could do no more than that. Even then, it was an awkward lift, and in the end I let him go again. Praxus’s head dropped back into the bowl, but at a different angle now, tipping some of the contents in my direction as it fell.

I scrambled sharply to my feet, but not quite in time. The splashing slime made contact with my knees. There was a murmur of laughter from the spectators, and in the torchlight I was aware of grinning faces watching me. Even the slaves who held the lights were having to suppress their smiles. Only two men did not seem at all amused: Mellitus, who was looking on with pained disgust, and Marcus himself, whose expression conveyed something closer to despair.

He was right to be dismayed. The death of an important guest during a banquet at one’s house is always socially unfortunate. When the visitor in question is a senior member of the military and has just been appointed with you as a member of a regional triumvirate, it is also a political embarrassment — an embarrassment made even more acute if the man is drowned in vomit and gawped at by a crowd. Poor Marcus. No wonder he had attempted to extract his guest before news of the manner of his death got out. He had intended, no doubt, to have Praxus moved somewhere a little more salubrious before announcing his in any case unfortunate demise.

I could feel some sympathy for Praxus too, although I had never liked the little I knew of him — unimaginative, inflexible and crass. The man who had so recently been a favoured appointee of the Emperor was subject to a double indignity: being sniggered at, as well as dead. And there was worse to come. There was only one way of moving him that I could see, and since Marcus was looking at me expectantly and something was obviously required, I voiced my thoughts.

‘I think we’ll have to drag him, Excellence. If I stay this end, and support his head, perhaps some of your slaves could take him by the feet? I think it might be managed then, without upsetting. . everything.’

Marcus nodded. He turned towards his slaves. ‘Six of the strongest among you do as he suggests.’ The dinner guests reluctantly stepped back and half a dozen burly kitchen slaves came forward in their place. Three of them ranged themselves on either leg.

‘Stand back,’ Mellitus advised, and the crowd unwillingly complied. I seized the hair and raised the head again — without kneeling on the floor this time — and on my cry of ‘Now’ the servants hauled, and the unfortunate Praxus slithered and bounced, still face downwards, out into the passageway. His pale blue synthesis rode upwards in the process, displaying a pair of huge and hairy buttocks and an inadequate pair of leather underpants. His hands, which trailed behind him, slithered through the patch where I had knelt.

I watched him go, and then — mindful of what my patron had required of me — I went back and, using the brass feather-pot as an implement, carefully fished out the bedraggled festive wreath.

Feeling rather in need of the facilities myself, by this time, I put the pot down, then turned aside and scrubbed my hands and soiled toga enthusiastically in the water bucket — which by some act of the gods had remained standing upright all this time. However, the goose feathers, and a large potted plant which had been placed in the far corner of the room in some attempt to beautify the space, had been knocked over in the disturbance, and now lay with the rest of the noisome rubbish on the floor. It seemed that some of the plant had fallen in the water too — at least, I hoped it was the plant. There was something unpleasantly soft and slippery at the bottom of the pail.

I flinched as my fingers touched it, and dried them hastily.

By the time I made my way into the corridor, the group was crowding round Marcus and the body once again. The portly priest of Jupiter, who (despite Jove’s connection with the army) was not supposed to see a corpse, was standing at the back, complaining loudly that this was a dreadful omen and portended woe, but at the same time stretching on tiptoe to get a better view. Only Mellitus kept himself aloof. He had been standing in the shadows, but suddenly he stepped into the ring of light from the torches and declaimed in his thin piercing voice, ‘This is what happens when people have no restraint at feasts, and encourage other men to drink too much.’

There was a sudden hush. It was such an obvious attack on Marcus that I was surprised that my patron did not protest. Instead he met the procurator’s eyes, and said in an expressionless voice, ‘Praxus did drink rather more than was good for him tonight. I ordered the servants to water down his wine, but he drank so much of it that it made very little difference, in the end.’

Mellitus looked gratified. ‘Perhaps it is a good thing for Glevum, after all. What sort of respect would such a man inspire?’ People were turning to look at him by now and he adopted a posture like a politician, clutching the shoulder-drape of his toga with one hand as he spoke. ‘A person who cannot govern himself is not fit to govern others. May the gods protect us from such leadership. See what his excess has brought him to, because he could not hold his drink. Ignominy. Desecration. Death!’

There was a little smatter of applause at this, as Mellitus had no doubt hoped. It was more oratory than conversation, but an assembly of magistrates and councillors enjoys such rhetoric, and the speech was certainly more polished than poor Loquex’s verse.

Something that Mellitus had said, however, gave me cause for thought. I made my way over towards my patron, who was still standing by the corpse. The slaves had just rolled Praxus over, and as I approached I got my first glimpse of that distorted face, under the clinging wet festoons of Jove knows what.

If I had taken a moment to consider, I should not have uttered the words which were on my lips. As it was, I spoke before I thought.

‘Your pardon, Excellence, but it occurs to me that it is rather strange that Praxus, of all people, should find himself so incapacitated by wine. He is such a giant of a man, and as a soldier surely he must be accustomed to drinking heavily.’ Marcus was staring at me fixedly, but he said nothing and I blundered on, anxious to make him understand. Usually he values my ability to see the implications of events, and I assumed that this was why he’d called me from the feast, and also what he wanted of me now. ‘He must have swallowed a prodigious quantity, don’t you think, to fall into the bowl like that and be unable to help himself? Surely there must be some other factor at work here?’

My foolish tongue! Too late, I recognised my patron’s warning frown. I looked down at Praxus’s upturned face again. Blue lips, protruding tongue and bulging eyes. Marcus had realised what I had not. Praxus had not simply fallen in and drowned: someone had either poisoned him or — given that red mark round the neck — pulled a cord round his throat and throttled him. Perhaps even both — Praxus would be no easy man to kill. And all this here, in Marcus’s house, after he had been drinking Marcus’s wine.

I did my best to undo what I’d done. ‘Possibly he had been drinking earlier? Or was he ill, perhaps? Did you have any inkling that he was unwell?’

‘He was perfectly all right five minutes earlier!’ That was Mellitus, who had moved forward now and was standing at my side with a calculating and gratified expression on his face. ‘It is obvious, my esteemed. . Libertus, is it?. . why your patron wanted you. You evidently have a swift grasp of events.’ The thin lips curved in an unpleasant smile. ‘Did you hear, gentlemen, what this clever citizen observed? Praxus was hardly a man to be overcome by drink — however excellent the Falernian wine — and besides, he was the only one affected, it appears.’

Not quite the only one, I thought, remembering how swiftly my table companion had succumbed, but I kept that observation to myself. Around me my fellow guests were murmuring assent and distancing themselves from Marcus by degrees.

‘Yet Marcus says he watered down the wine before it was served to Praxus, specifically.’ The sub-procurator’s mirthless smile widened. With his fleshless cheeks, his face reminded me obscurely of a skull. ‘That is particularly strange. I wonder what he ordered it to be watered with?’

The mood was getting dangerous. There were distinct ripples of unease by now. I was aware of whisperings in the crowd. ‘Marcus? Never!’ ‘Well, you can’t be sure.’ ‘That pavement-maker’s right — Praxus is too big simply to get drunk like that, and so quickly too. Besides, Marcus quarrelled with him only yesterday, I heard.’

I could have cursed myself for what I’d done. The fear of trouble, even by association, spreads like fire in a store of hay. Several of the more cautious councillors, I noticed, had already slipped back into the dining room and others were following one by one.

The small page-boy who had been in attendance at the vomitorium all evening had brought a bucket of water from the spring at the nympheum, the sacred pool within the grounds that formed the villa’s chief water supply. Now, at Marcus’s instruction, he bent and cleaned the face. It looked more grotesque than ever, and more guests withdrew. A moment later Marcus’s Nubian slave appeared.

He bowed his head and murmured, ‘Master, some of the councillors are asking for their personal slaves. Should I fetch them down?’ Personal attendants, like my own Junio, having delivered their masters to the feast, are always shown to the servants’ quarters at the rear and offered a more meagre supper of their own.

Marcus nodded his assent. The Nubian seized a torch and went, and very soon a huddle of attendant slaves was following him back down the colonnade, avoiding our corner even with their eyes. Marcus looked at me and raised his brows. He knew as well as I did what was happening. The first of his well-fed visitors had abandoned all pretence at dignity and were making a panic-stricken retreat into the night, like soldiers deserting a losing general.

He made an attempt to reassert control. ‘This is certainly unfortunate. Praxus has sustained an accident. .’

Mellitus interrupted him. ‘Ah, but as this perceptive citizen points out, it does not seem to be an accident.’ He addressed himself to the few guests who still remained. ‘Now I have a problem, gentlemen, you see. I have the highest possible opinion of our host, of course. Yet Gaius Flaminius Praxus is clearly dead. If he was not simply overcome by drink, then — as our friend observes — there must have been some other factor at work here. Someone must have drugged him in some way, or given him something poisonous to eat, and then — when he came out here, already weak — managed to drown him in the vomitorium.’

There was a gasp of horrified assent.

‘It must have been something of the kind. Praxus was too big to overcome in any other way,’ Mellitus went on urgently. ‘But hear me, citizens. Given that this is Marcus’s house and that we have eaten Marcus’s food and wine, and that only Marcus’s slaves were in the colonnade, I cannot — unless someone can persuade me otherwise — see any other explanation but that Marcus, or one of his household, had a hand in this. Of course, it was cleverly designed to look like a mischance.’

There were mutterings of reluctant agreement now. Even the priest of Jupiter joined in. ‘It seems that the procurator’s right. Now I come to think of it, Marcus was standing in there with the corpse. I saw him there myself.’

Marcus said sharply, ‘This is preposterous. This death is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I simply came out and found him lying there.’

Mellitus said doubtfully, ‘Perhaps there is someone who can vouch for that? Where was the attendant at the time?’ He whirled on the little page-boy with the water bucket. ‘Well?’

‘I was collecting water from the spring.’

Mellitus smiled. ‘How extraordinarily convenient. And why did you choose that moment for your errand, so late on in the feast? Did you receive an order from your master, perhaps?’

The boy turned pale. ‘I. .’ He stopped, and looked at Marcus helplessly.

Marcus said furiously, ‘I did not send him!’

‘But. .’ the slave began, and stopped again. He was sweating and clearly terrified, but none of the sub-procurator’s savage questioning could make him utter another word.

‘It does not signify,’ Mellitus said at last, with a contemptuous laugh, giving the boy a push which sent him sprawling to the ground. ‘We shall get the truth out of him in the end.’

I felt a chill run down my spine. I knew what that meant, and so did everyone else who witnessed it. When an important man is suspected of a crime within his house, his slaves are routinely tortured to discover what they know, since the authorities assume that loyalty to their master will otherwise drive them to lie in his defence.

‘By Mithras, don’t you dare treat my attendants so. .’ Marcus stepped forward to protect his slave, but then stopped in alarm. Clattering into the colonnade came half a dozen Roman guards, in military uniform and armed. Before them they pushed Marcus’s wretched doorkeeper, his arm twisted cruelly behind his back.

‘Master, I attempted to prevent them. .’ he began, and broke off with a cry of pain.

‘We are Praxus’s personal bodyguard,’ the biggest fellow said. He had a big, blunt square head and small eyes like a bull. ‘One of the departing guests told us that he was hurt.’

‘Dead,’ Mellitus corrected, and stepped aside to let them see the corpse. ‘And therefore it is my unpleasant duty, I’m afraid — and I call on these councillors and citizens to witness this — to formally accuse this man’ — he pointed towards Marcus — ‘of killing him, or, if not that, of having him killed by slaves in his employ. Balbus, have him seized.’

Everyone looked on, appalled. This was a formal indictment under law. Calvinus Nonnius Balbus was the corpulent decurion who had sniggered earlier at the poet’s verse. As president of the town council he was also its senior magistrate, so during his year’s term of office he was second in precedence only to Marcus himself. He was not sniggering now. He simply gave a little helpless moan and twittered indecisively, fingering his silver toga-clasp as though it were a charm. The few other guests who had remained glanced at one another doubtfully, uncertain what to do. However, the bull-like guard did not hesitate. He drew his sword and signalled to his men.

What followed was not a dignified affair. Marcus, after a startled glance at me, took to his heels and tried to run. He set off across the inner garden to the gate, while his slaves closed ranks to try to cover him. One of them, who was carrying a torch, lashed out with it, setting a soldier’s beard and hair alight. He was instantly cut down. The visiting dignitaries, shocked and splashed with blood, huddled in doorways and under arches as if turned to stone — like the statues in their damp niches near the garden pool, where two of the soldiers had caught up with Marcus now.

We could just make out their burly silhouettes against the misty dark as they tumbled him to the ground, seized him none too gently by the arms and hauled him to his feet.