A Roman Ransom

by Rosemary Rowe

  ‘He said he’d b-b-break my arms for m-m-me, if I refused to help,’ Cassius pleaded, producing his own cloak to wrap Julia in, after the slaves had brought fresh water, sweet oils and linen cloths for her to clean herself. He had offered figs and dates and almond cakes as well, but all she wanted was a sip of wine. ‘Honestly, Excellence, I had n-n-no idea.’

  ‘Well, you can tell that to the courts.’ Marcus was abrupt. ‘In the meantime, have your servants go and fetch a litter here to take us home. My wife is obviously not well enough to face a carriage drive. If only I still had the medicus. I wonder where he’s gone.’

  The medicus! I had forgotten him, and his sudden disappearance – was it just hours ago? ‘I think he’s gone to Glevum,’ I supplied. ‘Gwellia heard him tell the carriage-driver to take him to the gates.’

  Marcus turned sharply. ‘Could you find him, do you think, and bring him back to me? I know that he went off without a word, but I’m prepared to overlook that if he’ll care for Julia. Here.’ He stripped off his ring and handed it to me. ‘Take this seal as my authority. You can have the carriage – I’ll stay with Julia. When you get to the city, tell the carriage-driver to meet you at the guard-house where Gwellia and her slaves are waiting. He can bring you home when you are ready.’

  I nodded. ‘I will try to find him, Excellence. I would like to see him, on my own account. From something Lallius said, I have a notion where to look.’

  I was right in my surmise. I found him on a ship in Glevum dock. It was a scruffy wool-ship bound for Gaul, and clearly almost ready to be off. The captain was a surly fellow, and refused at first to let me board at all, but a glimpse of Marcus’s seal soon changed his mind on that.

  ‘I’m just an honest trader, citizen,’ he whined. ‘If someone asks me for a passage – and a citizen at that – am I to refuse him, when he pays me handsomely? Not my business to ask him why he wants to go. If he’s offended someone in high places, it’s no affair of mine.’ He let me up the gangplank – a wobbly piece of wood – but he didn’t offer to accompany me.

  I hate being on the water – even a ferry on the river makes me sweat. Those few days aboard the slave-ship had seen to that. The boat was shifting on the river, and lurched beneath my feet, and I clutched desperately at the cargo to keep myself upright. The smell of wool and skins was overpowering, and it was already very warm and stuffy in the hold. But there was an unexpected space along the side and I forced myself to inch along it to the front.

  The medicus was cowering in a space up at the prow. He had made a sort of nest among the sheepskins for his body and his scrolls and there was a flask of something at his side and a chunk of bread as well. All the same he looked as wretched as I would have been myself, and I felt an unexpected sympathy.

  He had pulled his toga up around his head to form a hood, and closed his eyes as if to shut out the sight of wool. He did not seem to notice my approach.

  ‘Thersis?’ I murmured, and he answered to his name. He shot upright at once.

  He looked at me, and groaned. ‘The pavement-maker. I might have known. I suppose there’s no point in a struggle. You’ll have guards outside – and they will arrest me anyway. Well, you’ll have your wish. They’ll take me back to Rome and into slavery again. No doubt my owner will brand me and keep me all my life in chains – if they do not execute me first. I almost wish they would. But he’s offered such a huge reward for my return that I expect they’ll be intent on claiming that. No doubt you’ll get a handsome share of it.’

  I said nothing. He looked very old and sad, but he had lost his lofty manner and was speaking man to man. I liked him much the better, suddenly.

  He began to struggle to his feet and pick up his belongings one by one. ‘Well, come on. You have been very clever, citizen. I really thought that I was safe this time. You can’t imagine what it’s like, you know – being for ever on the run. Every time I think that I have found myself a niche, someone turns up who knew me once in Rome and I’m obliged to run away again – move on and start another life elsewhere.’

  ‘It was the slave-trader that frightened you?’ I ventured.

  ‘Of course. He knew who I was. He supplied me to my owner at the start – I went to him because he had a reputation for dealing in the best. I thought he would find me the best price for myself and I could afford the Celsus scrolls – I’d always wanted them. I paid him a good commission too. It proved a big mistake. Not only did he sell me to an owner who refused to let me go, but he has dealings with people throughout the Empire. It’s not the first time I’ve come close to running into him, and naturally he’d know my face at once. So every time he’s forced me to move on. Fortunately, I have managed up till now. I have talents, as you know. I made a living everywhere I went. I might have done again, if it were not for you. No use to remind you that I saved your life.’

  It wasn’t self-conceit: it was the truth. ‘I owe you an apology,’ I said. ‘I really thought you’d planned the kidnapping.’

  He paused in the act of picking up a scroll which had escaped its ties and half unrolled itself. ‘And how could I do that? I wasn’t even there when Julia disappeared. And what possible advantage would it be to me? I was looking for a quiet place away from town where I could earn an honest coin and not be recognised. I really thought I’d found it – I told Aulus so, though of course I didn’t tell him why I needed it. Anyway,’ he had retrieved his scroll by now and was busy tucking it beneath his arm, ‘you must have known I had no part in it. You were surely involved in it yourself – the maid, the bag, the infant’s clothes, the cleverness – everything pointed to the fact that it was you. I thought you were trying to raise questions about me in order to divert attention from yourself.’

  I found that I was smiling. ‘And I thought the same of you. It was Myrna and her family all along, as you deduced, but there was a brother she didn’t know she had.’ I gave him a brief outline of the Lallius affair.

  He was so astonished he let slip his scrolls again. ‘Great Hermes! Well, I must admit it, pavement-maker, you are most astute. It seems you worked it out. With the assistance of your wife and slave of course – and my little contribution with the cloak. Doubtless His Excellence will reward you handsomely.’

  I didn’t argue. Julia would be grateful, and that was good enough. I did not even bother to point out that I had come to my conclusions about the cloak without his help.

  He took my silence as assent. ‘Well, I’d better gather up my books. Though whether I shall ever have need of them again is quite another thing.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll hand it to you, pavement-maker, you have bested me. But there is one thing that still puzzles me – if you had worked out who I was, why did you not denounce me to your patron earlier? You had chance enough – although I tried to come between you and make sure that you did not. Because you were not certain – was that it – until you spoke to the slave-trader today?’

  I shook my head. ‘It did not occur to me to wonder who you were. I did try to make enquiries about your background at one time, but only because I thought you’d planned the ransom notes and I was doubtful about taking any of your cures. And when I could learn nothing, of course that made it worse. I had no notion that you were Thersis, and therefore no longer a citizen at all.’

  He glanced down at his toga. It was a capital offence, of course, to impersonate a citizen when you were not entitled to the role. ‘As no doubt you’ve pointed out to them,’ he said, with bitterness. ‘And of course you had worked out who I was. You mentioned it the day the baby was returned, and when you came here you called me by my name.’

  ‘I swear that it did not occur to me until today,’ I said. ‘But when I discovered that you were not part of the plot, I asked myself why you would run away. I thought it was the ransom note, but when it wasn’t that, it had to be the slave-trader himself, or possibly the wet nurse that he’d brought with him. Then I remembered that the trader came from Rome and the likely explanation came to me. A doctor who r
efuses to be subservient, has enormous talents, has disappeared and would be about your age by now? You have become famous throughout the Empire, you know. And I remembered how you reacted when I mentioned the affair.’

  He bent, as though to pick up the flask and bread, and then seemed to think better of the plan. ‘Well,’ he said again, ‘it seems you’ve caught me now. If you had not caught me dozing, I might have slipped from you yet. But I must not make the guards impatient. They will be harsh enough with me when they discover that I am – legally – just a slave.’

  I shook my head. ‘There are no guards outside,’ I said.

  He gaped at me. ‘You didn’t come only to apologise?’

  ‘More to satisfy my curiosity.’ I didn’t mention Marcus. There was no question of Thersis’ agreeing to go back. ‘I thought that I’d worked it out at last, but I wanted to be sure that I was right.’

  There was sudden amusement in his tired eyes. ‘I can imagine I might feel the same myself. We are alike in some ways, you and I.’

  There was a moment’s silence, broken by the captain’s voice bellowing above. ‘Hey, citizen! Are you finished yet? The wind and tide are turning and we’re wanting to set off.’

  I turned to Thersis – or Philades, as he would always be to me. ‘You saved my life once – as you pointed out. Now I’m going to do the same for you. I shall tell Marcus that you have gone to Gaul – but only after the boat has safely left.’ My patron had done the same thing earlier – I told myself – allowed the culprits a day to get away. I was only following his example. I hoped that if he ever learned what I had done, he would see it the same way.

  The medicus could not disguise his disbelief. He grasped my hand – letting the scrolls go scattering again. ‘Thank you, citizen. I shall not forget.’

  And I would not forget him either, easily, I thought, as I made my slippery passage back and clambered to the deck. The captain had spoken of the wind, but there were men with heavy sweeps already standing by, ready to propel the vessel down the river with the tide. The heavy sail was looped up on the mast, and the master was pacing the deck impatiently.

  He looked surprised when I emerged alone. ‘You did not take the man?’ he muttered, handing me ashore.

  ‘He gave me the information I required,’ I said, and turned away. Behind me I could hear the dock slaves struggling with ropes and the creak and swish as the sweeps got under way. I thought of the doctor, already sweltering in that stinking hold.

  In another life, I thought, he might have been a friend.

  I turned quickly and walked back to the city gates where Gwellia and the carriage were awaiting me.

  Epilogue

  We were back in the roundhouse once again. I was happy to be home. The central fire was giving off a glow and tomorrow’s oatbread was baking on the hearth. I was seated on a little stool, with a cup of hot mead in my hand. The bed of reeds and straw awaiting me was not imperial comfort, but it smelt sweet and fresh, and the woman at my side was Gwellia, contentedly working at her loom. My slaves were chattering peacefully in their new sleeping room next door, and the chickens and the cattle murmured softly from their coops.

  No Roman villa had ever offered half such happiness, I thought.

  I turned to Gwellia, and saw that she had let her wool-stick drop, and was staring at the wall. She saw me looking and she smiled at once. But I had learned to know my wife.

  ‘What is it, Gwellia?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing, husband. Everything has worked out splendidly. Julia is fully back to health, and so are you – or almost – even without the medicus to help. And Secunda and her family got away – I was a little worried about that. Especially the little girls.’

  I grinned. ‘Even Cassius found an advocate to plead his cause and persuade the court that he was not to blame – he escaped with just a heavy fine, I understand, for unwitting injuria to Julia’s dignity, and bringing a false claim into the court. Of course, Lallius’s confession helped with that.’

  Gwellia said nothing. She knew as well as I did how that confession had been obtained.

  ‘At least he saw sense and bribed the guards to bring him hemlock before he came to trial,’ I said. Marcus was a just man in many ways, but he would have found it difficult to be impartial in this case.

  Gwellia nodded. ‘I’m sure that it was best.’

  ‘So?’

  She gave me a deprecating smile. ‘It’s that poor woman with the children. I do feel bad for her – she had done nothing except mind Myrna’s daughter for her when Lallius was there, and Marcus kept her locked away for hours.’

  ‘She didn’t tell us that she had the girl. I might have guessed, I suppose. She talked about five children, and then said that she had another four at home.’

  ‘She was terrified, poor woman, when she found you at the gate,’ Gwellia said. ‘She was sure that you’d charge her with robbing Myrna’s house.’

  ‘But her hands were empty,’ I protested. ‘How could she be a thief?’

  Gwellia laughed, a low delighted sound. ‘Oh, husband, you are such an innocent. The girl was pregnant, wasn’t she? I think she may have taken something from the house – a blanket probably – and hidden it underneath her dress. And I don’t think Myrna would begrudge it to her – she was finding it hard to manage with five children as it was. And now she had Myrna’s child as well.’

  ‘Well, there was no problem in the end,’ I said. ‘When we came back from Glevum, Marcus let her go. He didn’t even ask her anything.’

  Gwellia looked at me. ‘Not even what was to happen to the child?’

  And then I understood. It has been a source of grief to both of us that we were reunited too late to hope for a family of our own. Gwellia felt it very much. I remembered how she had stood there in the doorway of the inn, protecting the two children, and I felt a surge of love.

  ‘We had thought about adopting Junio,’ I said, ‘when he was old enough to manumit.’ Freeing slaves before a certain age is very difficult, requiring an expensive case at law.

  ‘So you know what I was thinking,’ she said sheepishly.

  I reached out and gave her hand a loving squeeze.

  She could not let go of the idea. ‘But Myrna was free-born,’ she murmured. ‘The child is not a citizen, of course, but if we applied to Marcus, don’t you think . . .?’ She pressed my fingers. ‘Julia would speak up for us, I’m sure.’

  I said, gently, so as not to cause her hurt, ‘But that would not be fair. I can’t have anyone take precedence over Junio.’

  She grinned at me. ‘Then ask Marcus about both of them,’ she said. ‘He’d make a dispensation for you, I am sure. Julia would make very sure he did. The boy for you, a little girl for me. We have got other slaves. We’d manage perfectly.’

  I looked at her. Still my beloved Gwellia, though the dark hair was streaked with grey these days and the lovely face was strained and tired. We were too old, I thought, for tiny children now. And yet . . .

  ‘I’ll speak to him tomorrow,’ I agreed. ‘In the meantime, come and sit by me. We make a splendid duo, you and I.’