A Coin for the Ferryman

by Rosemary Rowe

  ‘Great Mithras! Pulchrus!’ I whispered. ‘I’d forgotten him. With those soft hands and everything, it might have been a page. You don’t suppose . . .?’ I nodded at the pyre. ‘If he was supposed to be carrying a message to Londinium, no one would know he was missing anyway.’

  Junio shook his head. ‘I suppose that’s possible – I should have thought of that myself. But I don’t see how it can be Pulchrus, Father. He was carrying that letter about arrangements for the trip and Marcus received an answer from Londinium this very afternoon, by the same messenger who brought the news of Marcus’s father’s death. And that was under the seal of the commander of the fleet – the classis Britannica. I saw him open it.’

  ‘So Marcus’s letter obviously reached Londinium, you mean? But that does not prove that it was Pulchrus who delivered it.’

  Junio grinned. ‘But it seems as though it was. There was a hasty message from him attached to the reply, scratched on a piece of bark, saying that he and Hirsius – that’s Lucius’s chief slave – had left the wagons now and were riding on ahead, to make arrangements for the next stage of the trip. It’s a long way to Rome from where they’ll land in Gaul. And there’s no doubt that he sent it. He personally asked the messenger to bring it here, it seems – and from the description the fellow gave, it must have been Pulchrus – dashing, smart and vain. And anyway Marcus recognises the way he wrote the words.’

  I nodded, grudgingly. If Marcus knew the writing, then that settled it. Pulchrus had been taught the rudiments, of course – most pages have to have a smattering of script – but I’d seen a rare note that he’d written once, myself, full of idiosyncratic spelling and peculiar letter-shapes. Quite unmistakable.

  I sprinkled a little more wine and oil on the fire to help it burn. ‘So we are sure that Pulchrus reached Londinium all right?’ I was reluctant to abandon my neat theory here, but I was forced to admit that it was too convenient. Why would anyone kill a page if the message was going to be delivered anyway? I put the point to Junio. ‘No one had tampered with the letter on the way?’

  ‘It seems not, since the reply answered the request for information point by point. Apparently Marcus’s party is now going to stay with the fleet commander overnight – he has a fine villa just outside the town – because the governor’s palace is undergoing repair, new frescos and all that sort of thing, in preparation for the incoming governor. Anyway, the commander is a kind of relative – he is married to Lucius’s other cousin, it appears.’

  ‘A cousin of Marcus’s?’ I almost squeaked in my surprise.

  He shook his head to warn me to speak more quietly. ‘Only by marriage, on Lucius’s mother’s side. Marcus lost touch with his aunt and her relations after Lucius’s father put his wife aside, and it seems he never met this half-cousin in his life – though of course he’d heard of her. He didn’t realise she’d been stationed with her husband in Londinium. But it turns out to be convenient, as these things often are. The husband will take them to Dubris in one of the finest ships in his command, and accompany them in another, larger one to Gaul. It was all in the letter – I heard Marcus reading it to Julia. She was quite relieved to hear that they were going to family.’

  ‘So that’s not the answer to the mystery,’ I said reluctantly. Indeed, when I considered all the facts, this corpse could hardly have been Pulchrus anyway. He’d left the villa accompanied by slaves with a whole cartload full of luggage – to say nothing of the entertainers who were travelling with them – and we had witnesses in Glevum who saw him pass the gates. He could hardly have been murdered without someone’s seeing it. However, it had given me an interesting idea. This was not the only household that used mounted messengers. If there was any other rumour of a missing page, or the answer to someone’s message had failed to arrive . . .?

  Junio nudged my arm. ‘Sandals?’

  They were a pair of old ones, belonging to some slave. They had broken straps and mended soles and would not have fitted anyone bigger than a child, but I put them solemnly on the fire. A spirit should not reach the underworld without a pair of shoes, and presumably a ghost can modify its shape. Junio added some token wine and victuals to the blaze – to sustain the soul on its journey to the Styx – and that completed the ceremonial.

  I raised my head and said in ringing tones – for the benefit of the audience as well as the gods – ‘With these grave-gifts we commend this unknown spirit to the underworld.’

  ‘Unknown indeed,’ my son said in my ear. ‘And now we may never find out who it was.’

  I looked at the pyre. It was burning fiercely now and the body would soon be little more than ash. Whoever he was it would be hard to prove his identity now. Perhaps it did not matter. Marcus didn’t care, and at this stage it could make no difference to the murdered man. The mystery would have to remain a mystery. If the corpse had been a household page, he’d had a decent funeral; if a citizen we’d given him the minimum at least.

  I called for a final blessing from the gods, pulled down the folds of toga which I’d been using as a hood, and took a step or two away from the cremation pyre. Stygius came bustling over with a large container full of wine.

  ‘You’ve finished, then?’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘We’ll let the fire burn down a bit, and then we’ll pour this over him. That will cool the ashes and we can get them put into the ground. The mistress has provided a pretty jug for them.’ He gestured to Caper, who was standing at his side. ‘One of the ones the servants use to drink their watered wine.’

  Caper said nothing, but gave a goatish grin and held the jug aloft in hairy hands for me to see. When the conversation was in Latin, he wasn’t talkative.

  I nodded. ‘Very good. So I can leave you to it?’ I would be glad to go inside. It was beginning to drizzle in earnest now. If it were not for the fire, which gave off a lot of heat, it would have been very chilly and miserable indeed. ‘I’ll tell my patron the cremation is complete. He wanted it finished as soon as possible. You need not worry about accompanying us back. Junio and I can find our way all right.’

  Stygius shook his head. ‘The master wouldn’t like it. I’ll go with you myself. Caper can take over here till I get back again. It will take a little while for the fire to burn down, anyway.’

  ‘Won’t take too long to quench it, if this rain persists,’ I said, but Stygius appeared not to have heard. Instead he was already striding down across the field, and waiting for me and Junio to join him at the farm gate to the lane. He swung it wide ajar, and looked at me intently as I walked through it down the hill. ‘You won’t be wanting answers to your questions now?’

  I shook my head. ‘Marcus has lost interest and wants the matter dropped.’

  ‘This young gentleman seemed to think you wouldn’t give up so easily. He said as much when we were doing that so-called burial. If I can help you, citizen, in any way . . .’

  ‘I told you, Marcus wishes the matter laid to rest. In deference to his dead father, I believe.’

  Junio gave me a sideways grin. ‘But I notice that you didn’t put the plaid dress on the pyre, although I know that Lucius proposed it. That suggests to me that you have not entirely lost interest in the case.’

  I tried to look affronted. ‘The high priest agreed that it was not appropriate. It was almost certainly Morella’s garment, as I pointed out, and it should have died with her.’

  Junio glanced at me. ‘You’ve discovered that the peasant girl was called Morella, then?’

  I had forgotten that he did not know. I briefly outlined the happenings of the day. ‘So you see,’ I finished, ‘I couldn’t burn her garment with some unnamed man who’d been dressed up in it. That’s disrespectful to the souls of both of them. Assuming she is dead. I was only too happy to follow the high priest’s advice.’

  ‘Besides, you were reluctant to destroy a piece of evidence? And neither did you offer up the coins – although they are unlikely to have been a peasant girl’s. Because you still want to find out wher
e she got them from?’

  There was some truth in this, of course. Whatever Marcus’s instructions about the corpse might be, the question of Morella’s fate was still a mystery, and, whether she was alive or dead, I could not help feeling that it should be solved – although Gwellia would not like it if I went on with the investigation, especially when Marcus had told me I could stop. So, having no answer for Junio, I simply frowned at him.

  We were walking side by side along a stony track by now, and neither of the others said anything at all. They were avoiding looking at me as they picked their way, although I noticed that they were exchanging glances now and then.

  ‘The body is destroyed, in any case,’ I said. ‘It would be impossible for anyone to identify it now.’

  ‘So the murderer has had his way about that after all – since you’re still convinced that’s why he battered in the face.’ Junio’s voice was sad.

  ‘And what about the shoulders?’ Stygius put in.

  It was an invitation, and I fell into the trap. ‘I have been thinking about that, ever since I saw the body on the pyre. When I saw him in that slave’s tunic, it gave me an idea.’ I outlined my thoughts about the softness of the hands and the fact that a messenger might not be quickly missed, if he was carrying a missive between two distant points. ‘All right, it isn’t Pulchrus,’ I went on, ‘but it could still have been a servant from another house like this. If so there might well have been a slave brand on his back – and that wound would remove the identifying mark. And there was that narrow line round his neck as well – exactly as if a slave disc on a chain was used to throttle him. It would have been cut off afterwards, of course.’

  Stygius thought a minute, and then said in his slow, stolid way, ‘A page? That would explain the well-developed legs: he’d get them from clinging to his horse and running about with messages.’ He walked ahead to undo a second gate and lead the way across another field. His stride was slow but it propelled him well on this uneven ground. We had to hurry to keep up with him. ‘But I’m surprised that no one has set up a hue and cry. A good pageboy is an expensive thing to lose.’

  I was puffing, bouncing across hillocks and a little out of breath.

  Even Junio was breathing hard. ‘His master might not even realise that he is missing yet. But if it was a messenger, what happened to the horse?’

  ‘We ought to be asking questions about that,’ I said, pausing at a rugged tree to lean and catch my breath. ‘Not just in local households, but perhaps at Glevum gates, in case the watch has heard of any missing page, or anyone unexpected has tried to sell a horse.’ I caught the glance that passed between the other two, and stopped. ‘Only, of course, the matter has been closed. So there is no point in our discussing this. Please drop the subject, and we’ll talk of something else.’

  Junio gave me a knowing look. ‘You will not be interested in hearing what I learned in Glevum, then?’

  ‘And what was that?’

  I saw my son exchange a glance with Stygius, and grin. ‘Not very much you didn’t learn yourself, in fact, though the gate guards recognised the description straight away. It was the hair that made her look conspicuous, of course. But they’ve seen her – Morella, is she called? – come to the market with her mother lots of times.’ He hesitated.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Then recently she turned up one day on her own and asked directions to the inn where the dancing troupe had rooms. The soldiers thought that it was comical, of course, and laughed at her. One of them suggested that she find Lucius’s chief slave – he was taking bribes, apparently, to have acts selected for the villa, to come and do their turns in the hope that they would be selected for the Emperor. That bears out what the dancing woman told us, doesn’t it? That the girl was willing to bribe someone for the chance of going to Rome. Only, of course, it was a waste of time. This fellow Hirsius didn’t have the authority to arrange it anyway. Only Lucius could possibly do that.’

  ‘And Morella?’

  ‘The guards didn’t think she had the money – it was just a silly jibe. But they told her where the dancing troupe were lodged, and off she went. Unfortunately no one paid particular attention after that, but someone recalled seeing her later in the marketplace, and another guard thought she might have gone out past him later on, but he wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Any use, citizen?’ That was Stygius.

  I was affronted by this clear conspiracy with my adopted son. ‘How can it be useful, since the matter’s closed?’ I said, and trudged in disgruntled silence till we reached the house. ‘Junio and I must go in to take our leave. You have the funeral ashes to dispose of, I believe.’

  ‘As you say, citizen.’ And he went plodding off again towards the distant hillside and the still-rising smoke.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Whatever family ceremony had been taking place in the atrium while we were away was clearly over by the time we returned.

  The statue of Marcus’s father now had a wreath round its neck, another on its forehead, and a little pile of flower offerings laid in front of it. There was fresh blood on the household altar where the wether had evidently just been sacrificed, and the smell of burning flesh and feathers lingered in the air. An oil lamp still burned on each side of the shrine, and another pair flanked the garlanded patriarchal bust.

  Of Marcus and his party there was now no sign, nor was the high priest in evidence. However, the room was not deserted. Atalanta was there. Dressed only in a mourning tunic, barefoot and with her hair spread loose, she was seated on the stool which I had earlier occupied, playing a melancholy air upon a lyre and singing very softly in a keening croon. With her strong plain features smeared with ash and her hair in disarray, she looked like a Fury from some painted frieze, but the music she made would have charmed the gods themselves.

  I was not sure whether I should speak to her – if she was officially commencing some sort of lament, she should be permitted to do so undisturbed – but she looked up at us and smiled when she saw who it was.

  ‘If you are looking for the master and mistress, citizens, I am afraid they’ve finished here. The mistress has gone to oversee arrangements for the feast; the master is drafting a letter to send home. The priest has retired to the bath-house for a little while. Apparently more purification was felt to be required.’

  ‘And Lucius?’

  ‘Having a strip of mourning stitched round his toga-hems, in preparation for tonight. Fortunately there was still a bit of Marcus’s left over in the house,’ she said, her fingers rippling ceaselessly across the plaintive strings.

  ‘We simply wanted to take leave of them, and let them know that everything was done,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘I’m afraid I cannot assist you two citizens myself – I have been left here to play a requiem – but Niveus is in the ante-room, if you require a slave.’

  I clapped my hands, but there was no response. I waited for a moment, then I made up my mind. ‘I suppose that we should go in there and cleanse ourselves in any case,’ I said, ‘since once again we have been in contact with a corpse. We will go and find Niveus, instead of waiting for him here. I want him to fetch my slave for me, as well, so that I can go home to my wife as soon as possible.’

  Junio look startled for an instant. ‘Your slave?’ Then he grinned. ‘Oh, you mean Minimus, of course. In that case, Father, lead the way.’

  We went through to the ante-room, though Junio remained dutifully a step or two behind. Niveus was dozing on a stool beside the door, with a pile of linen towels stacked upon his knee. He did not stir as we plunged our hands and faces in the bowl, then all at once he started into wakefulness. When he saw us, he was on his feet at once. Under the dust and ashes his face had turned as scarlet as his usual uniform.

  ‘Citizens! You wanted me? But of course you did. You will be wanting that refreshment you did not have time to eat. If you go back to the atrium, I will bring it there at once. In the meantime, here are towels for you.’ And bef
ore I could stop him, he had thrust the pile at me and was disappearing in the direction of the kitchens at a trot, as if he was intent on earning some winning garland at a race.

  I dabbed my face, and Junio did the same – doubtless as pleased as I was to have rinsed at least some of the pyre-smoke from his skin. There is a lingering smell in charring human flesh which is inclined to stay with one for days.

  My son grinned, and took my towel from me – some slave-like habits are hard to break, it seems – while I smeared the altar ashes on my face again.

  ‘You would have no objection to refreshment?’ I enquired. ‘I know that we are invited to a feast tonight, and really I had hoped to get away, but I have not eaten since I left the roundhouse shortly after dawn – and had only a small beaker of spring water to drink. It might not be polite to eat things in the atrium just now, so soon after the familial sacrifice and with the memorial statue there, but we could always retire to the triclinium, I suppose.’

  Junio folded the towels and dropped them on the stool. ‘I snatched some bread and water at the garrison, and was given refreshment when we got back to the house. But I too would be happy to have something now – burying and burning corpses is very thirsty work.’ He patted some ashes on to his own boyish brow, and stood back to escort me to the atrium again.

  Atalanta was still expertly plucking music from her lyre when we returned, but to my regret the tune was coming to a close. She concluded with a long, high, throbbing final note.

  ‘That was beautiful,’ I told her, to her evident delight. ‘Where did you learn to play the lyre like that?’

  She gave a rueful smile. ‘The slavemaster who reared me up for sale saw that I was taught. “When a girl’s as plain as you are,” he used to say to me, “she needs some kind of talent, if she’s to fetch a decent price. I’ve spent too much on raising you to have you sold for fifty asses as a mere kitchen slave.” At first I did not like it – the hag who taught me used to try to beat it into me – but in the end I found I had a certain gift for it. So whenever I was exhibited for sale my master made me take the lyre. But it’s impossible to play it when your arms are chained, and he sometimes beat me round the hands because I didn’t sell.’ She said it without bitterness, as though this were no more than commonplace.