The Ghosts of Glevum

IX

I felt, rather than saw, Bullface raise his arm, and a moment later a harsh backhanded blow sent me sprawling to the floor.

I waited, huddled on the ground, expecting a dagger in the ribs. None came. I opened one eye — just in time for Bullface to aim a spiteful kick at me, and then the group walked on without another glance.

I did not move again until they had moved round the corner out of sight. Then I raised myself gingerly on to one elbow, and felt myself all over to make sure I was alive. I was. Blood was streaming from a cut above my ear, my arms and legs were bruised and scratched from contact with the ground, and my ribs ached where Bullface’s hobnailed foot had thudded into them. Otherwise — if there was an otherwise — I seemed to be more or less intact. I rolled over on to my knees and clambered painfully upright by leaning on the wall.

I stood there for a moment to collect myself. I could still hardly credit that I’d escaped again. I realised I had Junio to thank. Stripping out of my toga had been a good idea. Bullface was looking for a citizen — dressed as I had been at the banquet yesterday and again this morning at the garrison — so by becoming a dirt-streaked nobody in a tunic I had rendered myself effectively invisible. Of course it did not help my throbbing arm and ribs, but the attack had not been personal, merely an outburst of military impatience with an ageing non-citizen who got in his way. I sent up a mental prayer of thanks to whatever gods there were, and promised them a sacrifice or two, but I knew I was running out of miracles. No one can be that lucky for very long.

And I was not out of danger yet. I was not far from where my workshop was, and Bullface and his men were still in the area. Suddenly this suburb, where I’d lived and worked for years, had become a very dangerous place to be. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever feel secure again.

Working on the old adage that the best hiding place is where the searcher has already looked, I told myself that my best course was to set off in the direction Bullface and company had just come from, and to do it as fast as I could limp. I was shaken, sore and bruised, but I thought that I could manage if I held on to the wall.

I had taken perhaps half a dozen painful steps before I realised that even this was not to be. Fatbeard had materialised from the passageway and was in front of me. He had armed himself now with a rough piece of timber from a rubble heap, and was holding it before him like a kind of club.

I looked wildly about, but I couldn’t run, and anyway there was nowhere I could hide. Between Bullface’s men and this ruffian, I was truly in a trap. Without my patron I was nobody, and though I was not very far from home there was no one I could look to for support.

Fatbeard reached my side in two long strides and seized me so roughly by the shoulder that I winced. I had already bruised it in my fall.

‘All right, fancy-feet,’ he said, thrusting his fat hairy face into my own. His breath stank of bad teeth and rotten fish. ‘Let’s have the truth. I thought at first you were some sort of spy, but you were hiding from those troops, weren’t you?’ He shook me fiercely. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? So what do they want you for? Impersonating a citizen, and what else? It can’t be for stealing purses, like an ordinary thief — they wouldn’t go to all this fuss for that. So what was it? Selling secrets? What?’

Tradesfolk were coming back on to the street — Bullface and his guard had cleared it faster than the rain. For a moment I thought of hollering for help, but it was patently no use. People who were anywhere near us hurried past, averting their eyes and trying to pretend they hadn’t seen. I could hardly blame them. If there is an altercation in the street, it is usually safer not to get involved, and my assailant was not a figure to be meddled with.

Fatbeard must have sensed the way my thoughts had run. He gave a nasty smile and inched me back into the alleyway, prodding me roughly in the stomach with his makeshift club. It was a large and ugly piece of wood, big enough to support half a roof, but he handled it as if it were a twig. It was enough to ensure that I did not resist.

‘Well?’ he said again, when we were safely out of sight of passers-by.

I could not have answered coherently if I’d tried. I wondered faintly whether a beating from that club would be better or worse than a systematic questioning by Bullface’s men. On any logical reckoning, Bullface won. There was just a chance my rank of Roman citizen would help me if I were officially arrested. Here, a claim of rank was only likely to make matters worse: and if Fatbeard did thrash a confession out of me, he would presumably march me triumphantly away, hand me over and pocket the reward, in which case Bullface’s men would get me anyway.

But instinct won. Something told me that Fatbeard did not love authority, and that being on the run from men in uniform might just be an advantage in his company. It was worth a try. I gave a helpless nod. ‘I was trying to hide from those men, it’s true. They’ve just got here from Gaul. They’re not the regular garrison.’ I don’t know why I added that — it didn’t help.

Fatbeard looked singularly unimpressed. ‘If they come from Gaul, what do they want you for? And don’t lie to me!’ He gave me a warning clout around the shoulder blades, not quite hard enough to knock me down.

I wondered how long it would take to die, and how long it would take the news of my fate to reach Gwellia. What would become of her, if I was conveniently set upon and killed here in the street, thereby relieving the civic authorities of the necessity?

Perhaps it was the thought of that which helped me find my tongue enough to say, ‘Listen — I am a poor pavement-maker by trade. .’

Fatbeard interrupted with a sneer. ‘A pavement-maker, is it? What about that toga, fancy-feet?’

I hesitated, fearing that the truth would shatter any fragile hopes I had. ‘That slave you saw me with — I know him well. It is his master’s robe — he’s taking it to the fuller’s to be cleaned — and he helped me to use it to disguise myself.’ All of which was perfectly true, I told myself. I simply hadn’t mentioned that the slave and toga were my own. ‘I am a mosaic-maker, as I said. I have a little workshop on the northern edge of town. I try to ply my trade and mind my own business, in the ordinary way, but the commander of the force from Gaul is dead, and one of my customers — my patron — is accused of it. He was arrested last night by those men you saw — they were the dead man’s bodyguard — and now they’re after me. I found them on guard outside my workshop this afternoon. I didn’t stop to ask questions — I just ran away.’

Fatbeard spat. ‘You expect me to believe all this?’

‘Ask anyone who was in the Street of the Tannery today. Or at the citadel last night. Ask anyone at all. I’m sure the story will be all round the streets by now.’ I was safe in that. The forum wits say that a rich man cannot belch in Glevum without everyone’s hearing of it within an hour or two, and for once I was glad of the rumour-whisperers. The story of Marcus’s arrest must be the subject of the whole town’s gossip now.

My questioner looked scornful. ‘I shall ask people, fancy-feet, make no mistake. And if what you are telling me is lies, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born. In the meantime, you come along with me, until I decide what’s to be done with you.’ He had me backed up against the wall, but now he stepped back and gave me a sharp prod with his club, urging me to walk in front of him.

I was still battered from my fall and from the guard’s kick, so I could do nothing but shuffle on ahead. I lacked the strength or speed now to run away again, and there was no chance of giving Fatbeard the slip. Whenever I glanced backwards he was watching me — his little glittering eyes fixed on me as if attached with fish-head glue. In fact I soon learned not to glance at all. Each time I turned my head he jabbed hard at my spine with his piece of jagged wood.

We walked in silence down the muddy path. I was cold and I was hungry — I had eaten and drunk nothing since I left the roundhouse shortly after dawn — and with my bleeding face and bruised limbs I felt like misery itself. By now it was becoming dark, and though the rain had ceased a dank river-mist was rising. However, from what loomed up through the gloom, it was evident that we were going back the way I’d come, and I expected at any minute to find myself back at the rags-and-rubbish pile. But before we had arrived at it my captor stopped and pushed me roughly to one side, and through a gap where a portion of the wall had fallen in.

‘You get in there,’ he said, and thrust me forward into a kind of hut: a rough stone shed with no windows in the wall. It had the remnants of a roof, and from the general smell that rose from the earth floor it might once have been a shelter for a pig. The door, such as it was, hung lopsidedly, but even as he pushed me inside the hut I saw that Fatbeard was moving into place a huge flat stone to wedge the door, securing me inside more effectively than with any Roman barrel-lock and key.

‘Wait here,’ he said, as if I had a choice. ‘I’m going to talk to a friend or two of mine, and then we’ll decide what’s to become of you. I think that you’re probably worth something, handed in alive — but whether they’ll think it’s worth the risk, I’m not so sure. We aren’t so very keen on soldiers and the law round here.’ He was still heaving at the heavy wedge to close the door.

I tried to interpose my foot into the last thumb’s-breadth or two of gap, but he was stronger than I was and I had to draw it back before he crushed my bones. ‘Then we are of one mind,’ I said. ‘By all the gods, I swear. .’

‘Forget the gods,’ he said. ‘I’ve got my sources — ears and eyes across the town. We’ll soon see if you’re telling me the truth or not.’ The last words were muffled as the door fell to and he let the huge rock topple into place.

‘You can’t. .’ I began, but it was too late. He had. I fancied I could hear his footsteps squelch back to the path. Then there was silence.

I tried to strain my ears for any noise, but if there was human life nearby, all evidence was swallowed by the thickening mist.

I have a horror of small places in the dark — born of a time when I was captured as a slave and kept chained and bound for days in a heaving stinking hold, seasick and desperate. To allay my rising panic I attempted to explore the inside of the hut, but it was already much too dark to see. Only the faintest sliver of grey light crept in through the crack above the door, and there was another lighter patch which resolved itself — when I became accustomed to the gloom — into a small hole in the collapsing roof. I stood beneath it, gulping in the air, and discovered that the hole also admitted water in a steady dismal drip, although the rain had ceased some time before.

I reached out a hand. Nothing but the cold, damp stone and an uneven muddy floor. Even if I had been young and fit, I could not have scaled those walls — and I was hurt and feeling every moment of my age.

There was nothing for it but to wait. The realisation left me almost paralysed with misery. Tired almost to exhaustion, too, but there was nowhere I could rest — any contact with the walls or floor was bone-searchingly damp, and the thin tunic was all the covering I had.

In the end I settled uncomfortably on my haunches and wrapped my arms round myself for warmth, occasionally catching the drips to moisten my parched tongue. What a contrast with the night before! Then I had been a guest in an expensive house, warmed with all the best food and drink a wealthy man could buy. Amazing to think it was such a short time ago.

I tried to beguile the endless wait by mentally running through events again. Praxus, one moment eating and drinking with the rest of us, the next staggering off into the ante-room to die. Face down in the vomitorium, but too big by far to push there unless he was already weak — even that red weal round his neck could not have been inflicted if he’d had his health and strength.

Try as I would I could see nothing that would explain all this unless there was something in his food or drink: and that had been supplied by Marcus from the start, cooked in Marcus’s kitchen and served by Marcus’s slaves. So had someone else got in and tampered with the food? It seemed impossible — Praxus’s own bodyguard was at the gate, as well as the normal doorkeeper. And how could anyone make sure that Praxus alone would eat the poisoned dish?

Furthermore, I realised with increasing chill, when Praxus had not very soon returned, Marcus himself had gone out after him. Marcus, who would not reach out a hand to lift a glass if there was a slave nearby to hand it to him. There were no witnesses to what happened next. Even Golbo the little bucket-boy had been conveniently sent away, and he had told me himself that the instruction had come from Marcus personally, via a trusted slave. Then when — according to his own version of events — Marcus came upon the corpse of his most senior guest, far from raising a general alarm, he had sent for me.

The more I reasoned through all this, the more sinister it looked. Marcus thought Praxus was a violent and intemperate boor, and — in the temporary absence of the provincial governor — one who had been about to assume a great deal more power than was good for him in the running of the Republica Glevensis. I could imagine that, for the good of the colonia, my patron might feel the man was better dead, especially since he had designs on Julia as well. What I could not believe was that Marcus would perpetrate a deed like this and then permit his servants to be tortured ten by ten. He was a patrician, so a confession would not be extorted from him, at least until he came to Rome, but surely he was too humane. .

I stopped. Supposing he had, after all, confessed? That might explain why everyone was after me, when I had been permitted to leave the garrison unchallenged so short a time before.

I shook my head. That was not an explanation, after all; if the authorities had his free confession there was no point in their arresting me. Unless they had decided, for reasons of their own, that I was somehow implicated too. I shivered. A Roman jail is not a pleasant place.

Though few things, I thought, could be worse than this. Apart from my throbbing bruises I was damp, and as cold and hungry as I’d been for years. I was getting stiffer by the moment, too. I struggled to my feet, and slapped my arms about to bring some warmth into my limbs, then sank into a huddle once again.

It seemed to me that I was there for hours, shifting my weight from haunch to painful haunch, listening for the tiny plash of that persistent drip, and watching the tiny strip of grey light above the door fade into darkness as the night closed in.