The Ghosts of Glevum

XXIII

Tullio acknowledged my offering with the briefest grunt of thanks. ‘Here is your poet,’ he said shortly. ‘You stay here and talk to him — we’ll take these eels home. Better if the boys don’t overhear — the less they know, the happier their mother will be. This spot is safe enough. I’ll come back and get you later on. Come, lads!’ He signalled to his sons, and off they went.

Loquex looked at me suspiciously. ‘What is the meaning of all this? What do you want with me? I was told that I was coming here to see a citizen, acting on behalf of Marcus Septimus, otherwise I would never have agreed to come. I thought I was being taken on a short cut to the villa, but instead I find myself brought here to a swamp, to talk to a fisherman.’

‘I’m not a fisherman,’ I said, belying the assertion as I spoke by picking up my stick and landing another wriggling eel on the end of it. I tossed the whole thing to the bank — the eel did not let go. ‘Not by profession, anyway. I am indeed a citizen, a protégé of Marcus Septimus, and I was at the feast. I heard your poetry.’

I added this in the hope of flattering him, but the effect was unfortunate.

‘And so did everyone. It isn’t fair. I am invited to perform. I do my best, but nobody pays me what they promised me. No time to claim it — I’m just hustled off and told to come back another day. And then what do I hear? His Excellence is under garrison arrest, and no communication is allowed. What happens to the money I am owed? It took me several hours to write that verse, and find out all the information too.’

‘What information?’

‘To write my tributes. People never think of that. Just scribble a few verses, that’s what they think I do. They never think of all the work involved. I only recited a tiny bit of it, and wasn’t paid an as.’

‘Gaius Praxus came from Gaul

He’s very brave and very tall?’

I quoted. ‘You must have needed a lot of information to write that?’

Loquex was oblivious of irony. ‘You were there,’ he said eagerly. ‘You remember it?’

‘Who could forget?’ I muttered, softening the comment with a smile. Loquex was preening and I saw my chance. ‘Would you like the opportunity to recite the rest? What was Marcus going to pay you for the task?’

‘Six silver pieces.’

Six denarii. I could afford it, now that Julia had given me some coins, but it was an inflated sum. I thought quickly. ‘Of course that was a fee for writing it, and declaiming it before an audience,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you half as much if you’ll recite it now.’ I saw him hesitate and added swiftly, ‘That way it won’t be a total loss, and your fine verse will reach one listener, anyway.’

He looked around doubtfully. There was nothing to be seen except the reeds, the eeling stick and the marshy ground. ‘What, here?’

I nodded, and he cleared his throat. He took up a theatrical stance and launched himself into his verse. ‘Marcus Aurelius Septimus, just and fair. .’ he began.

If I hoped to learn anything from this, I was disappointed. The verse was every bit as bad as I recalled, and went on even longer than I feared. Far from concentrating on the most important guests, Loquex had managed a line or two about every single one. I listened carefully, but apart from a passing mention that the high priest of Jupiter had lands in Gaul, Balbus’s younger brother had been rising fast, and Councillor Gaius had got himself a younger wife — none of which fascinating facts had reached my ears — there was nothing of significance in any part of it, just a series of statements of the obvious. By the time he concluded the final stanza — which even mentioned me — my eyes were ready to glaze over. Loquex was looking at me expectantly.

‘Quite a feat,’ I said at last, trying to disguise my disappointment as I reached into my belt to find the coins. ‘You did well to remember all that without your scroll.’

‘As you said earlier, citizen, it is not easy to forget — especially when you have written it yourself. Of course,’ he added modestly, ‘I’m slightly famous for my memory.’

‘In that case, perhaps you can remember everything that happened at the feast?’ He looked about to launch into an account, so I added hastily, ‘After you left the dining room that night?’

‘Well, Marcus and the others cut me off, clapping before I’d properly begun,’ he said resentfully. ‘I was ushered out, into the court and round to the back door. That’s all. I tried to claim the money I was owed, but I was hurried to the entrance by a slave and told to present my bill another time.’ He looked at me. ‘I didn’t hear until next day that Praxus had been killed. I didn’t murder him, if that is what you are suggesting. Ask the slave who saw me out — he’ll tell you the same thing.’

I shook my head. The chances were the slave in question was in custody, being interrogated by other men — and no doubt by other methods. If there was anything to learn, the authorities were probably aware of it by now. But I persisted all the same. ‘Did you see anything in the corridor, or court? Anything at all unusual? Think carefully before you answer me.’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Not even servants from the dining room carrying wine and dishes to and fro — except the one who was accompanying me. He took me to the slave’s room to collect my coat, and when he picked me up again I noticed he had a plate of something in his hand. Oh, and there was a little bucket-boy as well, waiting outside the vomitorium: he seemed to be in trouble of some kind when I looked back into the court.’

I had difficulty keeping the excitement from my voice. ‘You came back to the court?’

He shrugged. ‘Not exactly. I intended to. The doorkeeper had been told to let me out, but I was so enraged at being hustled off halfway through my piece, without even being paid, that I asked the man to wait, intending to burst in on His Excellence and simply demand the money that was due. But as soon as I put my head round the colonnade and heard what was going on in the court I changed my mind and left.’

‘What was going on?’

‘The bucket-boy was being scolded for his idleness and ordered to clean the place at once, on pain of being whipped, because the feast would soon be over and the guests would want to visit the vomitorium again before they left for home. It all seemed very harsh to me — and quite unjustified. The room looked perfectly all right. But apparently his owner was seriously displeased.’

I found that I was standing like a statue, holding my breath. ‘Go on.’

‘It was all done very quietly, of course, so as not to disturb the guests, but sound always carries in a colonnade, especially a savage hiss like that, and obviously I could not help but overhear. Anyway, the lad got a savage cuff round the ear and was sent off to fill his bucket from a spring, which I gathered was outside in the grounds somewhere — without a torch-brand too, though it was clearly very cold and dark out there. I realised that if Marcus Septimus was in a mood like that, it obviously wasn’t a good moment to insist on being paid, so I slipped back to the doorkeeper at once, said I’d thought better of my plan and disappeared before the bucket-boy came back. The doorman had me in his sight throughout — as I’m sure he could testify. I had no opportunity to murder anyone.’

I nodded. ‘So who was hissing at the bucket-boy? A slave? Could you identify him again?’

‘Of course I could. It was the same slave that had shown me out. The one they call Umbris. He seemed to be in charge of everything. You must have noticed him.’

I breathed out slowly and let this sink in, remembering what Golbo had said. It tallied perfectly. Umbris sent Golbo from the court, apparently on Marcus’s command, at a moment of extreme convenience for anyone who had poisoned Praxus’s meal and expected him to stagger out and die. If Marcus hadn’t ordered that, who had? The slave could have no motive of his own, far less the money to buy poison with. Yet who else would Umbris take instruction from?

There was one obvious candidate, of course, suggested by something in Loquex’s narrative which had struck me forcibly. I asked, with a pretence at casualness, ‘Umbris talked about his “owner” ordering all this? He didn’t say “the master” — you are sure of that?’ Golbo, I remembered, had used the same word.

Loquex looked bewildered, but he answered instantly. ‘As I remember, citizen, “our owner” is what he said. Does it matter?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I meant it. Of course, there was nothing remarkable in the choice of word itself: ‘owner’ is interchangeable with ‘master’ in most instances. But what of the mistress of the house? Julia was owner, but not master, of the slaves. She had loathed Praxus for his sexual overtures to her — could she have taken this revenge on him? She was in the house throughout with access to the kitchens day and night, and so had every chance to slip something into wine or food — and to ensure it reached the proper guest. After the murder she was soon upon the scene. Suspiciously quickly, when one thought about the facts. Suppose she had instructed Umbris to send the bucket-boy away, because she knew that Praxus had eaten poisoned food and would very soon be struggling out to die in a way that — given the amount he drank — would hardly seem suspicious in the least.

The more I thought of this, the more unfortunately possible it seemed. The servants would obey Julia’s orders instantly, as unquestioningly as they would obey Marcus’s own. They would protect her too, I thought suddenly. If Golbo suddenly had guessed that she had sent the order which removed him from the court, it might account for why he had changed his mind and run away. Could it even have been one of Julia’s slaves who’d found Golbo in my dye-house on that fateful night, and silenced him in order to protect his mistress’s name? Cilla had left the villa, as I knew. Would that explain why he had looked surprised, and not attempted to defend himself?

And what about that treasonable document? Julia was capable of scheming — she’d proved as much today — and she had ‘co-operated’ with the search which had disclosed that letter in his study. Had she written it and put it there for them to find? It was possible that she had used her husband’s seal — Marcus wore his seal-ring every day, but it was likely that he took it off at night. Julia had more chance than anyone of using it, if she intended to discredit him. But why? Simply to draw suspicion from herself, because she’d murdered Praxus, and I had foolishly pointed out that his death was no mere accident?

But that made no sense, I realised with relief. Marcus was wearing the seal-ring when he was arrested, so Julia could not have used it later on to save herself. Nor could she have composed a convincing document: her grammar was erratic and she did not form her letters in the standard Roman army way, as Marcus and most educated writers did. That whole theory was impossible. I was creating illusions in the smoke like a Sibylline prophetess. Besides, although I could accept that Julia might wish pawing Praxus dead, I did not believe that she’d betray her husband and her child. I could more easily accept that Marcus had done the deed himself and written that incriminating letter too, trusting in the priest of Jupiter’s prophecy and hoping to hasten the day when Pertinax would be Emperor of Rome. I shook my head.

The old poet was looking at me anxiously. ‘I assure you, citizen. .’

‘It’s all right, Loquex,’ I said distractedly, handing him the coins. ‘I don’t doubt your word.’

He seized the money. ‘Thank you, citizen.’ Then, with a gleeful smile: ‘I can’t go until that fisherman comes back to guide me home. Would you like to hear my eulogy again?’

Since I did not know my own way back across the marsh, I really had very little choice. We had worked our way through the thing again, right down to the final verse about

‘Libertus is a citizen, a mosaicist by trade

Who oftentimes has come to his good patron’s aid’

before Tullio arrived to rescue me.