Requiem for a Slave

by Rosemary Rowe

  Maximus nodded dumbly and went back to his task.

  ‘It must be someone of importance, to have a private bodyguard,’ Junio put in. ‘Even Marcus doesn’t have one as a general rule. A slave or two, perhaps, to clear a way for him.’

  ‘And an armed escort following behind, to protect him if there’s any kind of incident,’ I pointed out. ‘He is a very important person after all.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Junio said triumphantly. ‘So is this some kind of public official, do you think? It’s against the law for private citizens to carry weapons in the streets, and how else could someone have effected an arrest?’

  I considered this a moment. ‘It is hard to say. There’s certainly been fashion this last moon or two for wealthy citizens to keep a bodyguard – supposedly to protect them in case the rebels strike.’ It was true. One increasingly saw little groups of burly slaves beside litters and generally accompanying their masters around town, though I had assumed it was generally more for show than anything.

  ‘I think it was a fashion which began in Rome – they say the Emperor is so afraid of plots against his life that he has a hefty escort everywhere he goes.’ Junio laughed. ‘Marcus will probably effect one when he comes.’

  I nodded. ‘He is not the only one. I’ve seen a dozen people accompanying one man, all carrying batons, wooden clubs and staves. It may not create the same effect that swords and daggers would, but it makes for an ugly picture nonetheless. And an effective deterrent, I suppose. That’s probably the sort of guard our mystery person has.’

  Maximus wasn’t listening. He wore a puzzled frown. ‘But why should he do it? Arrest Minimus, I mean.’ He gave a last flick to my toga hem and, glancing up to be reassured that I was satisfied, climbed to his feet again.

  ‘Presumably he’d heard there was a warrant out,’ Junio said at once. ‘So it must have been someone who met Quintus after he left here and stopped to talk to him. Someone who hoped to gain favour or reward by fulfilling what he thought was the chief decurion’s wish.’ He was clearly reasoning aloud and looking to me for agreement as he spoke.

  I nodded my approval of his analysis. ‘That’s certainly a possibility.’

  ‘Though, in that case, wouldn’t Quintus have known who took the boy? Or worked out who it was?’ Junio mused.

  I looked at him wryly. ‘And you don’t suppose he did?’

  He slapped his hands together in irritation with himself. ‘I am an idiot! Of course. If the man was a favoured protégé of his, it’s likely that Quintus would say exactly what he did – that he had no information – though no doubt he had a very good idea. But couldn’t we find out? This person must have been in Glevum yesterday, shortly after the litter had left here, and that should give us a useful place to start.’ He brought his hands together with a triumphant clap. ‘Find a rich man who met Quintus on the street and you have found the man who captured Minimus. It’s the only possibility. Until then, only you and Quintus even knew there’d been a crime.’

  ‘Apart from whoever throttled Lucius, of course,’ I said drily, echoing what Radixrapum had once said to me.

  My son looked chagrined. ‘I had forgotten him. But naturally, you’re right. In fact’ – his voice was eager now – ‘not only was the murderer aware there’d been a robbery, he had a lively reason for arresting Minimus – if only to deflect suspicion from himself. But then there was the purse they found on him . . .’ He paused and looked at me. ‘Oh, great Jove! I should have thought of that. The murderer could easily have cut that off himself and simply pretended that he’d found it on our slave! What could be more—’ He broke off as there was a tapping on the door.

  Events had made us nervous. We exchanged a startled glance.

  ‘That can’t be the urchin back again so soon,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t have had time to fetch the stallholder by now. Indeed, he would scarcely have had time to leave the street. More likely the tanner come to have another look!’ But I picked up my heavy hammer as a weapon all the same, before I said to Maximus, ‘You’d better answer it, as usual, to make it seem that things are normal here.’ I gestured to the corpse. ‘But don’t let anybody come inside. I’ll be right behind you. I won’t let you get hurt.’

  The slave-boy nodded nervously. He half-opened the door, then, to my surprise, disappeared round it and shut it after him. An instant later he was back again, looking much relieved. ‘It is the urchin, master, but he hasn’t been to town. He has a message for you from the tanner’s house, he says, but he won’t reveal it except to you alone. I think he has been told that there might be a tip.’

  I nodded. ‘Very well, I’ll go and speak to him. In the meantime, you two, deal with things in here. Junio, set some candles round the head and use my birrus to cover up the corpse.’

  ‘It won’t bring curses on us, master?’ Maximus blurted out, with a look of superstitious terror on his face. ‘Dealing with the body of a murdered man?’

  I was about to say that I had done so yesterday, and so had Radixrapum, but I saw the flaw in that – in the light of what had happened since, this remark was hardly likely to allay his fears. Instead, I told him gently, ‘It will make no difference now – we will have to purify the workshop and ourselves in any case. Besides, the best way of soothing an unquiet ghost is to afford its mortal body proper rituals.’

  ‘That is why you want to find his family, I suppose, so they can arrange a funeral?’

  ‘Exactly. And to call him by his proper name and put money in his mouth to pay the ferryman. In the meantime, we will treat the body with respect. I will come and help you when I’ve spoken to our little messenger.’

  With that, I slipped round the door myself and went out into the street.

  The drizzle had set in, in good earnest by this time, and the urchin was waiting there impatiently, hopping from foot to foot among the stones and trying to find shelter close against the wall, but he stopped at once when I appeared and stood there silently.

  ‘You have a message for me from the tanner, I believe,’ I prompted, remaining in the shelter of the doorway as I spoke.

  The ragged child looked doubtful. ‘I don’t think it was a tanner – not the man I saw. An old man in a loincloth who said he was a slave. Gypso or Glyppo or something of the kind. He said that you would recognize the name.’ Rain was dripping from his hair on to his ragged tunic as he spoke.

  I frowned. ‘I know the man you mean, and he’s indeed a slave. But what was he doing sending you to me?’ It was a reasonable question in the circumstances. It isn’t usual for servants to send private messengers, especially to somebody who only lives next door.

  The boy rubbed his wet nose with a grimy hand. ‘I don’t know, citizen. Perhaps the fellow’s mad. I rather thought he was. The message that he gave me was very strange indeed, but he swore that it was important and you would want to know.’

  I was still frowning. ‘Then why did he not deliver it himself?’ I did not add that I had an arrangement to meet him later on.

  ‘I think he would have done.’ The scraggy urchin rubbed his nose again, then wiped his fingers on his tunic skirt. ‘He said to tell you he’d been looking out for you, but hasn’t had a chance to speak to you alone. He doesn’t know how long he can keep coming to the pile, especially now that the rain is setting in. His mistress is suspicious of him running in and out and is threatening to punish him if he does not tend the fire.’

  I allowed, rather grudgingly, ‘That makes a kind of sense.’ I glanced towards the tannery, fearing that Glypto was being soundly whipped. But there were no sounds of anguish from the compound opposite. Indeed, there was no sign or sound of anyone, although the gate was open and, despite the rain, a rack of skins remained forlornly on display.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear that it makes sense to you, citizen.’ The skinny shoulders shrugged expressively. ‘Nothing he said made any sense to me and I had to shout at him to tell him anything. I was tempted to ignore him and go straight on into town to find that
stallholder, but the slave was so insistent that I decided to come back – in case it was as urgent as he said it was.’ He looked at me slyly. ‘He even suggested that you’d be prepared to pay.’

  ‘Then you’d better tell me what the message was,’ I parried. ‘Another half a quadrans for you when you do.’

  ‘Well . . .’ He ran a nervous tongue around his grubby lips and burst out in a rush, ‘. . . he told me to tell you the green man was here again.’ He paused and looked defiantly at me. ‘There! I told you it was nonsense—’

  I interrupted him, trying to work out the implications of the news. ‘When was this, did he tell you? Did he see the man? Or did he only hear him in my workshop overnight?’

  The urchin shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know any more. That is all he told me.’ Drips of rain were running down his face by now, making little paler channels in the dirt – he had given up attempting to wipe the water off. ‘I didn’t believe a word of it, in fact – just thought that he was moon-crazed and tried to humour him. Green man, indeed! But I see it does mean something – I can read it in your face.’

  I was cursing my carelessness in betraying that – I did not want the urchin telling tales around the town. ‘It’s just his name for someone,’ I said, as airily as if I knew exactly who was meant. ‘But thank you for the message, and I am prepared to pay – when you come back with the stallholder. But be very quick, and this time make sure you’re not waylaid!’

  ‘I will be faster than the wind,’ he promised, and – judging from the pace at which he set off down the street, his worn-out sandals flapping and squishing through the mire – he meant to try to make that promise good.

  Twenty-One

  I had promised to help my son and slave with the task of affording some dignity to Radixrapum’s corpse, so I went back to do it. (I do not altogether believe in tales of vengeful ghosts haunting the place where their mortal bodies had not been shown respect, but I certainly didn’t want to take unnecessary risks.) The two of them had been busy in my absence: the floor was swept and cleaned, and they had turned the corpse over and laid it on its back. Junio had spread my birrus over it and, with Maximus’s help, he was now setting tapers at the head and feet.

  Junio looked up at me as I came in. ‘What did the tanner say? You didn’t ask him for some embers to light the altar fire again? That would be useful. We could light the candles too. I know we brought some tinder, but that wouldn’t be as quick, and if you’re talking to the tanner . . .’

  I shook my head. ‘The message wasn’t from the tanner after all. It came from Glypto, that ancient slave of his.’

  Junio got to his feet, dusting his toga down, though the floor had been sprinkled with water from the jug and his hems were not as dirty as my own had been. ‘Anything of interest? I know that he heard noises in the workshop here last night at dusk. Does he know who it was?’

  ‘He says he saw the green man here again.’ I frowned.

  ‘So that is almost certainly our strangler,’ Junio said. ‘The green man was nearby when both the victims died.’

  ‘Monsters?’ Maximus looked up. He was in the act of setting the taper on a spike and he almost impaled his finger in his evident alarm.

  Junio laughed. ‘It’s all right, Maximus. Father doesn’t mean some creature from the underworld. It’s the just old slave’s word for somebody he saw, very close to this workshop, when Lucius was killed. The trouble is we don’t know why Glypto calls him that – it doesn’t seem that he was wearing green. We wondered if it might have been because he limed his hair.’

  The little slave-boy was looking much relieved. I had forgotten that he hadn’t heard all this before – Gwellia had whisked him off to bed while I was telling Junio the tale last night.

  ‘So the message was really that the murderer was here? But we already knew that, because we found the corpse. I wonder why it was so urgent to tell you, in that case.’

  ‘But Glypto couldn’t have known that,’ I reminded him. ‘He hadn’t seen the body of the turnip-man.’

  ‘The tanner did, though,’ Junio put in. ‘Do you think, in spite of everything, he might have told his slave?’

  ‘I doubt it very much, but we can soon find out. We’ll act on your suggestion. Get the empty brazier, Maximus, and go next door and ask the tanner for some coals.’

  ‘But don’t you want to talk to Glypto?’ Junio enquired.

  ‘Certainly I do, but since it’s obvious I have a slave with me, it would look remarkable for me to go myself. If Glypto is not able to meet me at the pile – as, from his message, I presume he won’t – it will give the tanner an excuse to send him over here, without his wife suspecting anything. In the meantime, I will go outside and see if by any chance I’m wrong and Glypto has somehow contrived to get away.’

  ‘Let’s hope he has done,’ Junio said to me as Maximus scuttled to obey. ‘You will learn a lot more from him on his own, though the coals will be useful in any case, of course. In the meantime, I am to stay here and guard the corpse?’

  ‘If the stallholder should come while I’m away, try not to let him in. You know what to tell him. I want to trace where Radixrapum lives, so I can send and tell his family what’s befallen him.’ I looked at the unhappy bundle on the floor. ‘I shall be lucky if they don’t suppose I murdered him myself. I’m fortunate that the tanner is so inquisitive – otherwise I would have no witness that the man was dead when I got here today, and that there was no corpse here last evening when I left.’ I left him to it, hoping to find Glypto waiting at the pile.

  Despite the drenching drizzle, it was a relief to be outside, away from the increasingly sick-sweet smell of death and the silent reproach of Radixrapum’s corpse. I paused for a moment to retrieve my cloak, happy to be breathing the fresh air again. I glanced towards the tanner’s house, expecting to see the small form of Maximus, but the gate was still ajar and there was no sign of anyone. Indeed, the whole street was deserted now – all the normal passers-by had taken shelter from the rain – so I wrapped my cloak around myself and set off squelching down the little alleyway in the direction of the midden-pile.

  But the alleyway was empty; you could see that at a glance. Only the raindrops splashing on the pile and washing little eddies of filth towards my feet, and a pair of drenched and starving dogs, fighting over something on the far side of the heap. There was no Glypto anywhere in sight.

  The dogs had stopped at my approach to snarl ferociously at me, baring their yellowing teeth in a distinctly threatening way, and I had no wish to tangle with their jaws. I left them to their unspeakable supper and beat a swift retreat back into the more salubrious surroundings of the street. As I emerged, I saw Maximus come out on to the road – accompanied by the tanner – through the open gate next door. The page was carrying the brazier of embers, I was glad to see.

  The tanner saw me and came hurrying across. He too was wrapped in a heavy cloak from head to foot against the rain, and he peered closely at me from underneath the hood, each of his boss-eyes glinting with concern. ‘Citizen Libertus, I thought that it was you. What have you done with Glypto? My wife is very cross.’

  ‘But—’ I was beginning to protest, but he waved the words aside.

  ‘The daft old fool has let the fire go out, he’s been away so long, and the whole of the mixture must be done again, she says. She’s blaming me, of course. Says I should never have agreed to let him talk to you at all.’

  ‘But—’ I said again.

  ‘Well, I didn’t mean to tell her, but you know what she’s like. She wormed it out of me that I’d agreed that he could come – though I didn’t tell her about the corpse, of course – and my life won’t be worth living if he’s not back at once. She’s threatening to leave and take her dowry too. I don’t care how important his information is, you’ll have to send him home.’

  ‘But I haven’t seen him,’ I said, when he paused and allowed me – at last – to get the sentence out. ‘I came out to find him,
but he wasn’t at the pile. See for yourself.’ I gestured down the alley-gap.

  He stared in that direction, but there was clearly no one there. Even the dogs were silent, gnawing at whatever stinking thing they had found among the heap. The tanner threw a baleful look at me.

  ‘And he isn’t in your workshop?’ he said suspiciously.

  I shook my head. ‘Why, in that case, would I be out here in the rain, looking for him?’ I demanded.

  The tanner looked non-plussed, biting his lip with his remaining tooth. ‘Well, if you haven’t got him, where in Dis has the old fool got to? He wouldn’t run away.’ The eye in my direction glared at me. ‘Unless he’d heard about the murders taking place next door. He did see the army take away a corpse. That might have frightened him, I suppose.’

  I frowned. ‘There may be something in that,’ I conceded thoughtfully, to my neighbour’s evident surprise. ‘He did send a message to me a little while ago – not personally but by a messenger – to say that he had seen the green man here again. That might account for why he isn’t here.’

  The tanner boggled. ‘You don’t believe that tale?’ He gulped. ‘Though they do say that corpses from the underworld turn green-skinned as they rot. You don’t think—’

  He broke off as Maximus gave a yelp and dropped the brazier on the ground, spilling half the contents in the miry damp.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I said severely. ‘If Glypto had seen a walking corpse, or any kind of ghost, he would have told us so – in graphic terms, no doubt. He simply said ‘a man’ and I’m sure that’s what he meant. He even heard him speak – quite normally, it seems.’ I turned to Maximus, who was still whiter than the toga of a candidate, and said as matter-of-factly as I could, ‘Maximus, pick that brazier up and take it to the shop, and light the candles while that ember is alight. Don’t stop to pick up the others that you dropped, just take the one you have. Hurry up or this rain will put that out as well.’