I had never seen the Governor before, except in statues. He was a little less impressive than his images – a man of middle height, and middle age, with a strong intelligent face, at once severe and just, and an air of dignified authority. In another time and place I would have liked him at once, but as I stood shivering in the courtroom to meet him I was more aware of the stern jaw and the determined stride than of the high forehead and the twinkle in the eyes.
A carpet had been laid out for him, all the way from the top of the steps into the judgement room. He walked sedately along it, though he seemed oblivious of it, to take his seat. It was a kind of gilded chair, almost like a throne, with a footstool before it on which he rested one sandalled foot. With his deep-purple edges and his fine cloak swirled behind him he sat there like a monument to justice, while servants placed a wreath around his brow.
Marcus, who was following, was forced for once to take a lowlier stool. He still wore a mourning band around his toga, and many of the other dignitaries did the same.
I tried to catch his eye, but he refused to look in my direction.
‘Set forth the prisoners,’ the governor said, and I was led forward. At least a hundred spectators, apart from magistrates and officials, had packed themselves around the walls and doorways, but there was an open space in the middle of the room. I found myself standing in it, with Zetso at my side. His hands, like mine, were bound together at the wrists, but he showed no signs of a flogging.
‘What are the charges?’ Pertinax’s voice was resonant.
I was arraigned first. I had ordered the arrest of the other prisoner, claiming the governor’s authority, in defiance of a signed authority which promised him safe conduct as the agent of his master. I had questioned the authenticity of the seals. A clear case of treasonable insult to the Emperor. Was I guilty of these things?
I would be asked the question three times, as required by law, but I could see no help for it. I had no counsel here to plead for me; my only hope was that Marcus would provide one. At the moment, however, he was simply looking excruciatingly uncomfortable, clearly regretting our association, and hoping that I would not try to claim his patronage.
‘Guilty,’ I said, and felt the court relax. Without a plea in defence, the death sentence was a foregone conclusion, though it must be ratified by the Emperor. Furthermore, a governor was not empowered to impose the most humane of such sentences, liberum mortis arbitirum (the freedom to choose the manner of one’s dying), whose victims had proved such a willing market for Felix’s poisons. When I was sentenced, there would be something to see.
Two more admissions of guilt and I was a dead man. What I did save myself, by making this confession freely, was the necessity of having it extorted under torture.
‘Charges against the other prisoner?’ Pertinax demanded, and the court turned its attention to Zetso.
The guard reading the indictment cleared his throat. ‘I understand, Excellence, there is a counter-accusation. I am not quite clear on the terms. This man was a servant of Perennis Felix, but he disappeared most suspiciously on the evening of the banquet. It appears that there is some evidence of a conspiracy . . . a letter . . .’
‘Let it be produced!’
And there was Junio, in a brand-new tunic (which I certainly had not provided), elbowing his way through the crowd to produce the waxed tablet which I had opened. I cringed, mentally. There were penalties for tampering with the mail: Felix had enjoyed imperial protection, and his seal still dangled from the damaged cord.
I glanced at Zetso, expecting to find him gloating and triumphant, but to my surprise he had turned the colour of curdled milk and was visibly sweating.
‘I was acting on the orders of my master,’ he shouted. ‘You should be asking him. I know nothing more about it.’
‘Your master is dead,’ Pertinax said, grimly. ‘I attended his funeral yesterday – that is what brought me to Glevum. He is hardly in a position to answer further questions. I fear that we shall have to rely upon your memory.’
The court, in deference to the governor’s rank, rocked with immoderate laughter at this sally.
But Zetso was not laughing. He turned to look at Marcus, and his voice was shaking. ‘Dead! So,’ he said, ‘you have discovered the truth. Well, I regret nothing. The man was a monster and a disgrace to Rome, and he deserved to die. I am only sorry that in the end I had no hand in it. And now my master is dead. You have killed him, and now I suppose you will kill me.’
There was a horrified silence in the court, but Zetso scarcely seemed to notice. He turned to Pertinax. ‘Guilty, Mightiness. Guilty. And before you ask me, guilty again. And proud of it. But you will not take me alive.’
He lifted his joined hands and brought them down with all his force upon the neck of his guard, who crumpled and sagged like a snail in salt. Zetso seized the sword in one roped hand and whirled it two-handedly above his head. ‘Stop me who dares!’ he cried, and springing over the recumbent guard he rushed towards the doorway, still slashing wildly about him.
There was a general panic. Women screamed and drew back at his approach, and a burly guard stepped forward to block his path. Zetso did not pause an instant. He was strong and fit and trained in swordsmanship. One mighty kick in the groin sent the older soldier reeling, someone fell bleeding, and next moment there was almost a riot as men and women trampled each other to avoid his path.
‘Stop him!’ the governor commanded, but a dozen soldiers had already started after him, unsheathing their swords as they ran.
But Zetso had caught sight of someone in the crowd. He stopped, staring, at a woman in a handsome stola who had fled for safety to the official podium. I saw who it was, almost as he did. Julia Delicta, her hood flung back and her lovely hair in disarray, was clinging to her husband for protection.
‘No!’ Zetso murmured. ‘You are dead!’ He looked around. The soldiers were forming up about him in a half-circle, backing him against the wall. He whirled the sword again, and they stepped back a pace, almost instinctively. But it was hopeless. He could not – even fully armed – continue to keep them all at bay. With his hands tied, he was doubly doomed.
‘I tell you I was acting for my master,’ he screamed. ‘Even if the Emperor was dead, Felix’s seal should have counted for something. Until you murdered him. Great Mars! What have you done to me? I was to have bought my freedom with this service.’ The blade went whistling through the air again, but this time as he finished the stroke he flipped the hilt in his hand, ready to turn the weapon on himself.
One of the soldiers caught the action. His sword flashed up and Zetso’s blade went spinning to the floor. The cornered man let out a roar of anger and despair, then suddenly charged forward, so deftly that he dodged between their weapons with no more than a bloodied cheek. He made a run for it.
They cut him down before he reached the door.
There was a terrible pause in the courtroom – an embarrassed pause, as if social protocols had been broken. The dignity of the court had been disturbed, and by dying in this way Zetso had cheated both the executioners and the human vultures in the arena. Then Marcus clapped his hands, and the administrative machine lumbered into action.
Officials carried away the corpse for burial in the communal pit. Spectators strained and stared and argued for a view, until the attendant soldiers drove them back at swordpoint. Slaves appeared as if by magic with a tableful of wine and dates for the official party, while other less fortunate menials scurried with mops and buckets to clean the tiles, and take away the splendid woven carpet which was soaked with blood.
They seemed to have forgotten me. For fully half of an hour, while they cleared the courtroom and discussed the situation in hushed whispers, I was left to stand helplessly in my corner – my hands still bound and with a soldier at my side – with nothing to do but think.
I did think. About Zetso and his warrant, and his seals and his letters, and his extraordinary behaviour in the dock. He had ap
peared to be accusing Marcus of killing his master. For a moment I almost toyed with the idea: Marcus had been oddly uninvolved when Felix died, sitting quietly at the table looking distracted. I had noted it at the time, and put it down to embarrassment. Between Felix’s drunken lustfulness, and the Celt’s distaste for wine, my patron must have felt completely ill at ease. But now? And why had Zetso seemed to think the Emperor was dead?
And then, and only just in time, I saw.
Pertinax had taken a rod of office from a lictor and banged on the floor with it to command attention. ‘The incident is over,’ he announced. ‘We will resume the business of the court. Where is the prisoner?’
I was pushed forward again. Zetso’s demise had made no difference to the charges against me. I had defied the Emperor and I could not deny it.
‘Are you guilty of the charges?’ the governor asked me, for the second time.
‘I am,’ I said. ‘But I claim mitigation.’ I found myself uttering the time-honoured formula which was the only legal grounds for amnesty. ‘I acted in the interests of the Emperor, and I have information vital to his safety.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
‘So, Felix was plotting against the Emperor!’ Marcus rolled over languidly and held out his drinking vessel to be filled. ‘Libertus, it seems that you still have the power to surprise me.’
It was the evening after the trial, and instead of dying agonisingly on a tree or being burned alive for the entertainment of the spectators, here I was lying on a comfortable couch in Marcus’s villa enjoying a private banquet with the Governor. Gaius and Octavius were also guests, and in defiance of more urban custom Phyllidia and Marcus’s wife were eating with us. Admittedly the dish before me was a complicated Roman confection – swan, peacock, duck, chicken, partridge and quail fitted one inside the other, stuffed with aniseed and smothered in fish pickle – instead of the simple roasted sheep which I would have preferred, but in the circumstances I was hardly quibbling. Given that I was also reclining next to the delectable Delicta, if they had served me with fish pickle neat I would have swallowed it with a smile.
I speared up another knife-load of duck. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was all in the wax tablet. “We are too late. The man is dead. Send word to Glevum.” I should have seen the force of that at once. Who in Glevum would not have known that Felix was dead? And if Felix was dead, to whom was this “word” to be sent? Zetso knew no one in the city. He had been there even less time than his master, since he spent the day before the feast transporting me to Corinium.’
‘So “the man” was the Emperor himself?’ Pertinax waited patiently while a slave carved him a single slice through duck, partridge and quail.
‘I wondered why Zetso had been so discreet,’ I said. ‘Avoiding using his master’s name, even in a sealed letter. But of course, he meant Commodus – he dared not write that name openly.’
‘So that is why Zetso sent to my house?’ Gaius put in, in his precise old woman’s voice. ‘He meant to send to Felix. He did not realise that his master was dead. But surely you must have mentioned that to Zetso? I cannot imagine how he failed to hear it.’
‘He told me he had been “out of the public eye”, hiding with that ex-centurion in his villa. And I did tell him, or I thought I did. He was boasting of his warrant. Commodus had named him as Felix’s agent, so he claimed. I said, “And now that he is dead” and Zetso was amazed. It was genuine surprise – I felt it at the time – but he was applying my words to Commodus. He became very agitated I remember, and asked what he was being accused of. He even asked if we had found the “killers”. Plural, you note.’
Junio, standing behind the diners opposite, caught my eye and gave me a most impertinent wink. He had been permitted, as a special treat, to wait on me at Marcus’s table and he was enjoying himself hugely.
Pertinax looked grave. ‘A man hears what he expects to hear, no doubt. If he was expecting the death of the Emperor, he would jump to such a conclusion.’
‘He was astonished when I told him that the death appeared to have been caused by choking on a nut. That was when he wrote his letter and rushed off to “warn the rest”. Of course, he sealed it with Felix’s seal, which he believed was still legitimate. And when they caught up with him in Letocetum he kept referring to his “seal”. He meant Felix’s, of course. I wondered why he never mentioned his warrant, but of course if Commodus were dead that might not have been honoured by the new incumbent.’
‘We have sent to Letocetum,’ Marcus said, picking at an olive with his pointed spoon. ‘We have found the letters. They were in wax. Zetso tried to erase them, but Felix had written so hard that there are marks in the casing. Enough to prove the matter, we believe. We hope to round up the others who were with him.’
‘Officers from the northern legions, I believe,’ I said, with a sideways look at Pertinax. These were, after all, his soldiers.
The governor sighed. ‘Indeed, and I believe that I could name them, too. The same men who tried to persuade me to take the purple, not so long ago. I imagine we can find them – they will have gone back to their legions. They will have learned by now that the Emperor still lives, but they have no special cause for alarm. When Zetso was arrested, the guard was told he was wanted for murdering some unknown Celt.’
‘He did that all right,’ I said. ‘On Felix’s orders. Felix took a house and invited Egobarbus to it, with promises that he should be paid what Felix owed him. Then he sent Zetso to say he was delayed, and sent a jug of wine as an apology. Only, of course, Zetso had poisoned it. He told me himself that Egobarbus was “poisoned”, though I had never mentioned how he died. We found the phial further down the road. He had not even bothered to disguise it.’
‘We have found the Egobarbus party now,’ Marcus said, thoughtfully. ‘They were discovered yesterday, just where you said they would be, on the road south to Aquae Sulis. A courier brought me word this afternoon. They have been arrested, and are being held awaiting word from me.’
‘And was their story as I suggested?’
He picked up his goblet. ‘Very largely so. After Zetso called at the hired house they were banished upstairs. Their master was waiting for the Roman, he said, and there was secret business. They heard no more, and when they dared to come downstairs next day they found him dead. But there had been no one there, and they thought they would be blamed. That would have meant instant death for them. They panicked and pushed the body down the well. The senior slave among them appears to have masterminded it. He claims to be a cousin of the Celt, and therefore the heir now Egobarbus is dead. He was a barber, by the way. I do not know how you discovered that?’
‘I guessed,’ I said. ‘It is impossible to keep a moustache like that without constant trimming and the application of wax. Egobarbus was vain. He would not travel far without his hairdresser. The man may well be a cousin. All those red-haired men are children of the same father. I imagine he cut off the moustache and fixed it with wax to his own face?’
‘He has admitted it. He knew the carriage was arriving and he saw a chance to escape. He dressed himself in Egobarbus’s cloak, and assumed his place.’ Marcus took a sip of his wine. ‘The intention, I think, was merely to come to Glevum and disappear, but there was a confrontation with the carriage-driver. He had been promised extra fare, and the slaves had no money. They had to appeal to Felix.’
I nodded. ‘I was extremely stupid there. Of course, that proved that Felix had not met their master. They would hardly have appealed for money to a man who would betray them. Felix must have been appalled – he thought the Celt was dead. But he could hardly say so, and he issued an invitation to the feast. The slaves could scarcely refuse. It must have been a dreadful evening for them – the pretended Egobarbus had poor Latin, hated wine, and his moustache was in constant danger of slipping off. I saw him dab at it a hundred times. He must have lived a night of agony.’
‘And then,’ Phyllidia said suddenly, ‘my father choked and died. The p
oor slave must have almost done the same. Two deaths at his side in as many days. He would never survive a questioning – so he threw off his disguise and became a slave again?’
‘Exactly.’ I speared another piece of duck. Unfortunately, it was covered in fish pickle. ‘And of course, being a slave, it was easy for him to slip past the guards as part of the funeral procession. He was the one who claimed to be going back to find his father, of course. Meanwhile, the others stayed in the town just long enough to sell Egobarbus’s sample trinkets which he had probably hoped to tempt Felix with. Enough to finance their journey home. No doubt some citizens got an unexpected bargain – that was the finest bronze. The slaves could hardly ask the real value, they would have called attention to themselves. They must have been terrified of discovery, and I must have frightened them terribly when I found the piece of discarded moustache. No wonder they attacked me.’ I swallowed the pickle with difficulty. ‘I thought at first it was Zetso who had joined the funeral, but of course it wasn’t. In that fringed military hood he could not have passed for a slave. The keeper of the bawdy-house reminded me of that.’
‘Then how did Zetso get past the gates?’ Marcus snapped.
‘I imagine he just drove through them in that carriage. There was no search afoot at that time, and with that blazon no one would have challenged him. I suspect one soldier noticed him, but he’d been flirting with Zetso earlier, and may have thought to save him trouble. He said nothing.’
‘So the death of Egobarbus was nothing to do with the conspiracy?’ Gaius said, breaking a piece off his roll. ‘Merely an unpleasant accident.’
‘I have been thinking about that,’ I said, ‘and I am not so sure. Felix had no qualms about exercising power – look what he did to Marcus’s herald. And Egobarbus was not a citizen, merely a tiresome Celt demanding payment – payment, incidentally, which Felix could easily afford. But even if he did wish to kill Egobarbus, why the secrecy? One trumped-up charge, one claim of insolence, and Egobarbus would have been strung up somewhere for the crows, just as the herald was.’
Murder in the Forum Page 23