We were approaching the colonia by now, driving through the rows of monuments, graves and vaults which lined the road, some of them so large and imposing that the cemetery area looked almost like a town itself. Then we were among the straggling buildings of the outskirts, and finally under the wall itself.
‘Well,’ Marcus said, as we bowled through the gate, under the triumphal arch, and down the wide paved street towards the forum, ‘thank you for your help in this. I am sure that you would have preferred to solve the mystery unaided, but probably Rufus would not have confessed without your investigations. I am not displeased.’
He was looking delighted, in fact. Of course Rufus’ confession pleased him; not only did it ‘solve’ the murder where I had failed to do so, but it proved that the killing was a non-political matter. That was Marcus’ primary concern.
I got down from the gig at the statue of Jupiter, in the middle of the square. Marcus was going to his apartment, and then to the baths. ‘A massage and a proper shave,’ he said, with relish. ‘That is what I need, now this matter is dealt with. My thanks once more, Libertus. And I shall call on you again if I need your services, never fear.’
‘You are sending to Lucius tomorrow?’ I said. That was daring of me. I had received my dismissal.
Marcus tapped his palm with his cane. ‘I am considering it, certainly. Why do you enquire?’
Careful, I told myself. That answer had been brusque. I hitched my toga more comfortably over my shoulder (a discreet reminder of my status) and produced my most disarming smile. ‘It is foolish of me,’ I suggested meekly, ‘but I am curious to see this brother of Crassus. It was for his approval, after all, that the librarium pavement was ordered. I wondered if I might accompany you?’ I did not add that I was looking for a reliable witness to give me the answer to some unresolved problems.
I had judged correctly. Marcus gave me an indulgent smile. ‘A question of professional pride?’ he said. ‘I understand. Then of course you may come – although I shall send a messenger, I think, rather than go myself. Do not be disappointed, my old friend, if Lucius does not even recall your famous pavement. So much else has happened since.’ He signalled to his driver, and was gone.
I walked slowly away, avoiding the moneylenders, letter writers and pimps who always loiter around the forum, out into the busy streets again. Under the shadow of the basilica I stopped to buy a pigmeat pie and a pot of foaming ale – what a pleasure to eat honest food again – and then, instead of going straight home, made my way towards the South Gate.
I had no idea what I was looking for.
‘A shrine’ Aulus had said. There were temples enough. Not only big temples – the central civic one to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, and the shrine of Mars where the festival took place – but dozens of little buildings dedicated to minor deities including, here and there, altars to the local gods. The Romans have always tolerated lesser religions, provided that they do not interfere with the proper running of the state and worship of the emperor. And many native people, like myself, do not greatly care what name you give the gods provided that you reverence them somehow. So these smaller temples do a roaring trade, with all kinds of little stalls at the doors selling incense, fire-sticks and offerings to the faithful.
So at what shrine had Rufus shrugged off his follower? And where did he go thereafter? There was not a great deal beyond the South Gate except centuriated fields – great areas of rectangular enclosures (mostly owned by retired veterans) growing crops to feed the army – and a rather unsavoury inn for any unwary traveller who failed to reach the Glevum gates before sundown.
I glanced into one or two of the shrines, under the watchful eye of the temple slaves. All were dedicated to different gods, but apart from the nature of the statues and the quality of the floors, they were all largely the same. They were built on the Roman pattern: smallish, dark, enclosed areas beyond a pillared portico, the stone altars and carvings made more mysterious by the flickering of candles or oil lamps. They all had the same smell too, characteristic of temples everywhere: the smell of smoke and offerings, singed pigeons, burning herbs and incense, strewn flowers and libated wine, and – seeping everywhere like the dark stain at the altar – the odour of sacrificial blood.
I did not visit the Mithraic temple, nor the Vestal one; the rites there were too complex to permit a casual passer-by. Nor, I was sure, would Rufus have strayed into one, even by accident. Then, suddenly, I struck gold.
It was more primitive than most of the others. The same pillared entry, the same dim and smoky interior. But the statue in this temple was of an older, wilder god, beardless, but with his long hair streaming and the carved eyes full of power. I knew him even before I saw the attendant images of dogs, their tongues extended to lick and heal, or the models of diseased limbs and hands petitioning a cure. Nodens, god of the river, the healer and the justice-giver. He was overtaken now, by Roman gods, but he had once been much honoured hereabouts. He still had his adherents, and there was a huge temple to him a few miles downstream. Even here the pool of water at his feet was full of votive offerings – amulets, plaques and figurines. Lead tablets too: even the devotees of Nodens had taken to the Roman habit of inscribing their petitions, as if the god would somehow prefer to read their prayers than hear them.
Of course. Of course. Suddenly I understood. Rufus was a Silurian. This was where he had come – not, as Aulus had thought, because he was hiding from his pursuer, but because this was his destination. I went to the pool and leaned over to read the lead tablets. ‘All thanks to Nodens for healing my boils.’ ‘A curse on Cenacus who has stolen my ox.’
It would be sacrilege to take them from the water – already the attendant slave was eyeing me suspiciously – but somewhere among them, I was sure, there would be another inscription. Very likely a long and sonorous one. ‘May Nodens chill the blood of the man who injured my beloved and feed his carcass to the worms.’ Something like that. Probably Rufus would not have dared to name names, not even his own, for fear the curse might be traced back to him – especially with Aulus watching. Many humble people wrote oblique curses of that kind, for much the same reasons, so even if I found a likely plaque, proving that it was Rufus would be difficult. But he had offered a curse-tablet here, I was certain of it.
I wondered how much it had cost him. A votive offering inscribed even with a general curse did not come cheaply, especially to a slave. Little wonder he had no money left. It was useless to ask Rufus about it, either. He had sworn an oath of silence to the gods and made a votive offering for Crassus’ death. The outcome had not been exactly what he hoped – he should have paid more, he said – but he believed that Nodens had done his part. Rufus would fulfil his bargain to the grave.
I parted with five as coins for a votive candle, to the satisfaction of the attendant, and lighting it from the altar flame, stuck it on a spike near the image. Not as a prayer – I am not a follower of Nodens – but as a kind of homage from one old Briton to another. The stony old deity had been a god in this island before Caesar was ever heard of.
Then I went back into the street, and hurried home through the grey light of a cloudy afternoon. The workshop was still standing, and by the time I got there Junio was waiting for me.
Chapter Nineteen
I have no access to water-clocks or hour-candles, but it was nothing like the second hour, if I am any judge. It was still early morning. I was sitting back on my folding stool in tunic and bare feet, luxuriating in a homely breakfast of boiled oats which Junio had prepared for me (we have a fire, and I can never come to love the Roman habit of buying everything ready cooked from the street stalls), but I had barely had time to take my first lingering mouthful before a messenger arrived from Marcus. His excellence had decided to send an envoy to Lucius straight away, and invited me to present myself at his apartments as soon as possible.
‘As soon as possible’ in this context meant immediately, of course, if not sooner. I abandoned my breakfast,
wound myself into toga and sandal straps and followed the messenger back into the town and down the streets towards the forum, where we found Marcus’ official envoy waiting for us.
He was a patrician-looking youth with a supercilious expression, and though he was dressed as befitted a messenger, he was clearly a very important person, not least in his own estimation. He wore an immaculate, fine woollen tunic with embroidered borders, soft red leather sandals and a wonderful scarlet cloak fixed with a huge golden brooch. He looked at my dilapidated toga with disdain. Better an exclusive servant, his glance said, than an impoverished citizen like me. He strode ahead, leading the way, and giving off a faint aroma of expensive oils.
The carriage was waiting at the West Gate. Not a gig, this time, but a closed imperial carriage, with gilded doors and leather-cushioned bench seats. It was an imposing sight. Marcus was clearly intending to create a stir. He would never normally have sent mere messengers in this. Yet there was obvious method in it. If a man in expensive livery arrives in an imperial carriage to make you an offer for a house, you are unlikely to wait for a better offer – and in any case refusal is likely to prove dangerous to your health. Especially if you are already a member of a questionable religion.
Secretly I had no complaint. I remembered Andretha saying that Lucius lived ‘a long way off’. A closed carriage offered considerably more comfort than a gig, especially since the wind was cold.
There was more than wind to endure, as it happened. It began to rain, heavily at first and then settling into a damp, dismal drizzle which slowed our progress even on the military road. On an ordinary track it would have been a nightmare of mud-bogged wheels, slithering horses and broken axles. Even the envoy was driven into speech – he had been preserving a well-bred silence all the way from Glevum.
He had affected his master’s habits, too, and was beating a little tattoo of impatience on his palm with his baton, as he said irritably, ‘What a dreary little island this is. Water everywhere but in the bathhouse. We shall scarcely make the posting house in two hours, even on this road. Thanks be to Mercury for Roman engineering.’ He turned away and gazed at the passing scenery, in case I should be tempted to an answer.
I was looking at the scenery myself. We were well over the river and out on the Isca road now where it was less frequented. Marcus had obtained directions from the messengers who went to Lucius after his brother’s death. ‘A foul journey’ they had called it, and so it was, out past the cultivated lands and into the forbidding forest.
There were always legends about such places; apart from the obvious risks from bears and brigands, there were hair-curling stories about the road at night. Spectral legions who marched in eerie silence at your side, and when the moon rose, vanished. Eyeless wanderers who approached unwary horsemen begging for a drink, and whose faces, when they raised their heads, were so hideous that all who saw them perished at the sight (though how anyone could live to describe this horror, in that case, it was difficult to explain).
I have never personally met a phantom and do not (on the whole) expect to do so, but, creeping along a strange road through a dim, dark, forbidding forest wraithed with mist, nothing would altogether have surprised me. Brigands, though, were a more tangible possibility. Our driver was armed, of course, but I had nothing except my eating knife. I wished the envoy carried a better weapon than a ceremonial baton, though if it came to a fight he would probably refuse to get his tunic creased. I need not have worried, as it happened. All we saw were a couple of drenched messengers and a man with a depressed donkey lumbering towards Glevum with a little cart full of sheepskins.
But it was dreary. How I wished that I was making my way to Corinium instead, looking for news of Gwellia. For that, I would have fought off brigands barehanded.
We reached the staging post, where Marcus’ imperial warrant immediately produced fresh horses for the carriage and a simple refreshment for ourselves. Then we set off again, and shortly afterwards turned down the side lane as we had been directed.
It was a surprisingly good road, although it was not a Roman one and it twisted and turned fearsomely. The landowner, whoever he was, had learned lessons from the military road-builders and built his track with a raised centre so that the rain and mud drained off it, and up here where the ground was higher and free from the huge overhanging trees, the going was easier than I had feared.
We were looking for a homestead, Marcus had said, belonging to one of the Dubonnai, the local tribe. A shrewd man, clearly, since he appeared to have held onto his land while at the same time avoiding execution, dispossession, relocation or even the ruinously expensive public office which often disposed of wealthy local princes.
We found the place at last. Heard it first – the bark of dogs, the whinny of a horse – and then smoke from the cooking-fire stung our eyes and throats. My companion was beginning to look distinctly uneasy. And when, breasting the fold of a hill, we saw it, he let out an uncomfortable sigh.
To me, it was a sight to make my old heart leap. A proper old-fashioned Celtic farm, its snug little timber-and-daub roundhouses nestling inside their protective circular bank and ditch, the thatched roofs layered and golden like so many neat conical haircuts. And inside the compound the familiar, cheerfully casual noisy chaos – haystacks, grainstores, pigsties, osier-piles, goats, grandmothers, dogs, beehives, farm tools, children and chickens. I had not seen so homely a scene since I lived in a roundhouse myself.
‘At least there are a few stone barns up on the hill. The place is not entirely without civilisation,’ the envoy said disapprovingly. ‘But no sign of a hermit. I suppose he will be somewhere even more disagreeable.’ He banged on the roof for the driver to stop, and dismounted grandly from the carriage. I followed him to the gate. A cacophony of barking dogs and hissing geese greeted us from behind the woven barrier and half a dozen grimy urchins gazed at us in wide-eyed wonder.
The envoy hesitated, and then called, in his most imperious voice, ‘Who is in charge here?’
A youth in a coarse blue woven wool jerkin and britches uncurled himself from the pile of osiers he had been splitting and rose to meet us, smiling, balancing his heavy axe in his hand. With his tousled hair, wild beard, broad shoulders and air of effortless athleticism he looked, I thought, more than a match even for the brutish Aulus.
Beside me, I felt my companion stiffen.
‘Citizens?’ The lad spoke Latin haltingly. He glanced at the attendant on the carriage behind us and then at the envoy’s embroidered tunic, staff and seal. It seemed to tell him something. He ran a tongue around his lips and amended himself hastily, making a swift obeisance. ‘Excellence?’
It was a mistake, of course, but he could not have done better. The envoy was visibly flattered.
‘On his excellence’s business. We are looking for Lucius,’ he said, and then, seeing the boy’s look of bafflement, ‘Lu-ci-us, the Chri-st-i-an. On a matter of ur-gent im-port-ance.’ He spoke unnaturally loudly, as if by shouting he would somehow make the language easier to understand.
I murmured an explanation in Celtic, and the boy looked at me gratefully.
‘There is a cave up in the hills there where he has a retreat. For a long time he did not have even the simplest luxuries, but recently my mother has prevailed on him to accept a few comforts, and gifts of food now and then. Apparently his brother, too, has given him a wealth of things, though he has already sold some of them to give food to the poor.’ His dialect was not quite my own, but it was more comprehensible than his Latin. It must have been a secluded rural life indeed which had screened him so effectively from the official tongue.
I answered in my own tongue. ‘Your mother seems to know a lot about him.’
He grinned, reminding me of Junio. ‘You know what women are when it comes to holy men. Since he cured my brother, she never stops talking about him.’
I have a suspicious mind. ‘He cured your brother, you say. Does he heal with herbs?’
The boy
shook his head. ‘With herbs, no. Not that I know. The only herbs I have seen him with are those he gathers to eat. No, my brother fell into the brook, and hit his head. The hermit jumped in, at the risk of his own life, and pulled him out. Elwun was given up for drowned until the hermit stretched out over him, and breathed his own breath into his nostrils. Even after he brought the boy home, he stayed here a day and night praying over him. It was all my family could do to persuade him to accept dry clothing. When Elwun recovered, it almost persuaded my mother to join the Christians.’
I was trying to imagine a relative of Crassus who would risk his life to save another. I failed. ‘A brave man,’ I murmured.
‘He is famous in the district,’ the boy said. ‘Everyone comes to him. But he isn’t one of your “I-am-better-than-you-poor-sinners” types. He lived a sinful youth, he told my mother, and is trying to atone for it.’
‘Forgive me,’ the envoy said acidly, cutting across our words in crystal accents. ‘When you have quite finished your private conversation, perhaps you would favour me with a translation?’
I explained.
‘If you know where this hermit is,’ the envoy said, ignoring me, ‘kindly send for him at once. We have a long journey ahead of us. We shall be lucky to get home before the town gates shut, as it is.’
The boy looked uncomfortable.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’
The boy looked at me, and then stumbled, in poor Latin, ‘He is in mourning, excellence. The death of his brother has affected him sorely. He has not left his cell since, except to pray. He has been fasting, shaved his head and put on sackcloth and ashes. He may not wish to come.’
The envoy looked flabbergasted, rather as Jove might look if someone asked him to put down his thunderbolts. ‘Not wish to come?’
‘I am not sure that the boy has understood,’ I said quickly. ‘Perhaps if I were to speak to Lucius . . .?’
He looked at me in surprise (it was the first time I had ventured a word to him, unbidden) and then said sulkily, ‘Perhaps that would be best. Is there anywhere to sit in comfort in this cow byre?’
The Germanicus Mosaic Page 16