The Ghosts of Glevum

by Rosemary Rowe

  Even Sosso had stopped admiring his shoes and sprang up from his muddy perch to take his place. I noticed that the others left him the biggest piece of bread. He impaled it on his knife blade and immersed it in the pail. He did not stop to savour it, as the others did, but gnawed at it hungrily at once, then dipped the remnants in the soup again and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth.

  I had been watching all this hungrily, and was surprised at his restraint, but the reason for it soon became obvious. He speared another piece and gave it to the wraith, who was thus able to eat his meagre meal without for an instant letting go of me. Sosso took up his former station guarding me. The burned man produced a large dead eel from a sack, swiftly struck off its head with a sharp stone, stripped off its skin between his forefinger and thumb, then thrust a long stick down its throat and set it to cook across the fire. It was all done in a moment, and soon the smell of cooking eel arose. I have never cared for eel, but it smelt so good it almost made me faint.

  ‘I need food,’ I said uncertainly. ‘Give me some. I’ll pay.’

  Sosso sneered. ‘How? Your underpants?’ The knife-blade flickered closer as he spoke.

  Suddenly an inspiration dawned. ‘I know where there’s a denarius,’ I said.

  The knife withdrew perceptibly. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the fountain of Apollo, near the market place. I dropped it there myself. Or rather, I offered it to someone from the garrison, if he could get a message to my patron or give me some information at the least. But first of all he wasn’t any help and then he accidentally knocked it in. It should still be there.’

  ‘Not any more it’s not.’ The man they called Cornovacus stepped forward suddenly and I got my first proper look at him. He was tall and thin and scrawny, wrapped in filthy rags, and his face had the pointed features of a rat, but there was a certain darting sharpness in his eyes. He had a silver coin in his hand. ‘This is the money, Sosso. I was going to give it to you for the common purse. By Dis, I think he’s telling us the truth. He was at the fountain earlier – I saw him there. And he did put money on the water trough. Three whole denarii. I saw the wretch that he was talking to – a cursed fellow in a military cloak – stick out his greedy little hand and scoop the others up, may Jupiter turn his cursed blood to bile. But this one fell in.’ He turned it in his hand. ‘I got it out. I thought the Fates had smiled on me at last.’

  ‘How could you know all that?’ I was startled into speech. ‘There was nobody about.’

  Cornovacus laughed mirthlessly. ‘That’s what you think, my friend! We don’t survive by being visible – especially not those of us who need to take a purse or two to live. I was there all right – in the shadows by the fish market. I saw you, as I say.’

  That was a sobering idea, in itself, but now that he had testified on my account I almost began to hope again. Then, suddenly, I saw the implications. If he had seen me, he had seen me in a toga, and in that case I was probably as good as dead.

  His next words to Sosso confirmed my darkest fears. ‘This scum on the wine of Bacchus may be what he claims. But that’s not all he is. He put the coins on the corner of the trough. I saw him do it. But I didn’t realise it was him. He didn’t look much like a tradesman then.’ The little rat eyes glittered as he looked at me. ‘Dressed up in very fancy clothes, he was.’

  There! It was out. I closed my eyes, and waited for Lercius and his piece of wood. But it was Sosso who whirled round to me. ‘Where’s your purse? Had money then.’ His speech might be slow and jerky, I admitted to myself, but his thought was quicker than a flashing sword.

  I am not prone to the sorts of oaths that Cornovacus used, but at that moment I almost cursed the Fates. If I had kept my purse I might have got away – or at least have eaten something warm before I died. ‘I gave it to my slave to take home,’ I said reluctantly, resigned to the truth now that I had nothing left to lose. ‘Together with my toga. But I did have money earlier. Your friend is right.’

  ‘Up to something with the soldiers, eh?’ Sosso sneered. It was a long utterance for him.

  ‘I keep telling you. I brought the money to try to bribe the guard. I wanted information, that’s all. That’s why I gave it to that man – he’s a military secretary with the garrison. A nervous sort of fellow with a tic.’

  Parva with the pock-marked face spoke up again. ‘That’s true, too. I know the man. He’s the one I was . . .’ She paused, then went on in a different tone of voice, ‘The rat. He was carrying at least two denarii, and he only gave me three lousy quadrantes. Said it was all the coin he had.’

  Sosso ignored her. He turned away and held a muttered conference with Cornovacus and the wraith, leaving me, for a moment, without a guard. Shoeless and helpless as I was, I contemplated making a bolt for it, but the sight of Lercius at my elbow dissuaded me. The others were still whispering, though I could not catch the words. I didn’t like the look of it at all. What were they scheming now?

  Suddenly Sosso came loping back to me, and the wraith resumed his firm grip on my arm. ‘Agreed?’ he asked the group.

  ‘If he can afford to bribe the secretary, he can afford to pay to save his wretched skin,’ the woman said. ‘He’s worth a denarius or two, by the look of him. Just the sort to have a wealthy patron, too. Let him promise, and make sure he pays.’

  ‘If there is any problem, Lercius will soon take care of it,’ the scarred man put in. ‘Splinters under the fingernails and a heated brand or two. You know what these accursed white-robers are. He had a purse. It must be somewhere. I didn’t lift it from him, that’s all I know. He’ll pay.’

  Sosso nodded to Cornovacus. ‘Very well. Get Tullio,’ and the man slipped away, like the shadow that he almost was.

  I wondered vaguely who Tullio might be and what further trouble he would bring. But there was little time to think of that. Sosso squared up to me – or at least up to my chest, which was about as far up me as he reached. ‘One denarius for food. Two more to get you home. Tonight!’

  It might have been a bargain in the normal scheme of things, but tonight he might as well have asked me for the Circus Maximus. Yet I was not in a position to object. I would have to agree and hope that I could barter later on – or perhaps find something in the roundhouse he could have. If Gwellia had not taken everything to Corinium, there was just a chance that I could produce enough to save my skin.

  ‘Very well.’ I found that I was shaking with relief.

  Too quick! The crone said instantly. ‘Make it four denarii. That’s two for us at least. Grossus will want half, if he hears of it. Or maybe five.’

  It was absurd, but I had to make a stand. The price could go on rising indefinitely. ‘Three. You’ve already got my spoon and belt and shoes,’ I said.

  Sosso stood on tiptoe to leer at me. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Tough, isn’t it? Four.’

  I was shivering with cold. ‘Very well,’ I muttered. ‘Four denarii. And not a quadrans more. And remember I can’t pay you if I have died of cold before you get me home. Nor if I have starved to death. Where is this food you were promising?’

  Sosso nodded. He left me to the mercy of the wraith, whose bony grip tightened on my arm, and walked purposefully to his discarded boots. He kicked them towards me. ‘Fair exchange!’

  They were split, spoiled, misshapen, but I pulled them on. There was no way to dry or clean my feet, freezing and muddy as they were, but the scant protection of those ill-fitting evil-smelling bags felt like a kind of paradise to me. I knew in that instant why, in this climate, shoes were such a prize and why Sosso had been so delighted to have mine.

  Sosso hadn’t finished. ‘Sack,’ he said, and someone fetched the one that had contained the eel. It stank and it was damp, but it was extra warmth, and I wrapped it round my shoulders like a cloak.

  Sosso grunted with impatience, snatched it back and made three slashes in it with his knife. ‘Like this,’ he said, and pulled it over me, making a kind of ragged outer tunic of the thing. It
was disgusting and uncomfortable, but I saw that he was right. The second layer gave me much more warmth than simply huddling it round me would have done. Then Sosso seized the smaller bread sack and arranged it round my head and shoulders like a sort of cape. I was still chattering with cold, but I was by now better dressed than some of the other members of the group.

  ‘Food,’ Sosso ordered, and someone handed me a piece of eel on a stick. Blackened on the outside and half cooked within, nevertheless it was hot and it was tasty. ‘Another!’ and I wolfed that down as well. Then someone was sent to put some extra water in the pail (I did not ask where from) and Sosso gave me that, and I found myself drinking the greasy remnants of the soup. Anything edible had been mopped up long before, but I sucked on the remaining bits of bone, and chewed the ear of something, till I felt a little better, and there was nothing left at all.

  It was only then that I looked up. The rest were eating eel, though there was an altercation near the fire between the woman with the child and the pock-faced girl. I realised, with a pang of guilt, that I must have eaten someone else’s share. I had been thinking resentfully of what a denarius would buy – honey cakes, hot pie, and a better class of soup – but I began to view my meal rather differently. It was possible these people had not seen food for days. What they had given me, though poor, was all they had – though naturally the weakest suffered most.

  I felt better for it, too: not full or comfortable or warm, but I was no longer in danger of a faint. I turned to Sosso since he seemed to be in charge.

  ‘If you are going to get me out of here, when do we start? And don’t play any tricks. If I turn up dead, they’ll be looking for my shoes.’ That wasn’t true, but it was worth a try. The fire was burning low by now, and I noted with alarm that one or two had wrapped their rags round themselves and were curled up by the wall, as if they intended to be there all night. If I was expected to do that, I thought, I should be dead by dawn. ‘What’s the plan?’

  Sosso said nothing.

  ‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘What’s the plan? Or don’t you have a plan? Are you waiting to discuss it with your bearded friend? And what’s your connection with him, anyway?’

  Sosso bared his teeth in a sort of smile. His eyes and blade both glittered in the glow. ‘Too many questions,’ he said. He gestured to a place beside the fire. ‘Sit down there and wait.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  He smiled more broadly then. ‘You’ll see.’

  XII

  Sosso had instructed me to wait and see. I waited. I seemed to have been a long time waiting, but there was little I could see. The night was getting colder all the time and the fire was reduced to embers now. Those who had not brushed away the ashes at the edge and settled themselves where the ground was warm had slipped away into the dark.

  Sosso and the wraith remained immovable. I was still huddled against the wall where I’d been put. At last through the muffled mist I heard a sound. A dull plash of oars came from the waterside and a muttered conversation reached my ears. Then a figure materialised through the gloom, and the man with the burned face was standing there.

  ‘Tullio’s here,’ he said to Sosso. ‘Down with Cornovacus on the bank.’

  ‘He’ll do it?’

  ‘For the price.’

  Sosso gestured to the wraith to raise me to my feet. ‘Come on,’ he said to me. He had his knife aimed somewhere near my heart.

  ‘Come where?’ I rubbed my arm. Where the wraith had gripped it, it was bruised and sore, and all my other injuries ached too.

  ‘You’ll see!’ Sosso said again, and urged me forward with his blade.

  I stumbled down the lane, my shapeless boots making me seem slower and more clumsy even than I was. We reached the waterfront. We had no torch, and at first I could make out nothing in the mist, but then I detected movement, and at last I saw.

  Cornovacus was standing by the shore holding something on a length of rope. It seemed to be a sort of giant snail. As I moved closer I realised what it was.

  It was a bent man with a boat upon his back. Scarcely a boat at all – more of a shell, a soft wood frame covered with the skin of animals, and painted with a kind of home-made pitch. I’d seen such things before: the river folk of the Dobunni tribe use them for catching eels and fish, and occasionally for ferrying goods across when the Sabrina isn’t running very fast. They’d always looked as fragile as a leaf.

  As I watched the man rolled his burden free and launched it silently into the stream. Then, as Cornovacus held it by the rope, the boatman stepped aboard, holding a single paddle in one hand. He looked like a river god himself, outlined against the sky – long hair, long beard, long robe, bare feet: that was all of him that I could see.

  There seemed scarcely room for him to sit and the little craft was rocking crazily, though he remained standing and seemed unperturbed, holding himself upright with his oar. A terrible premonition came to me that all this was part of Sosso’s plan, and that another such boat might be found for me. I hate boats. I have always hated boats, ever since I was chained aboard that ship – and I have never handled one. I knew that if I attempted to do it now, I’d drown.

  I turned to Sosso. ‘You don’t expect me to row in one of these?’ I was whispering, but the sound seemed very loud. Something rustled in a clump of reeds nearby.

  ‘Of course not. It’s Tullio’s boat. He steers.’ I was sure that Sosso’s ugly face was grinning in the dark.

  That so alarmed me that I almost squawked. ‘Surely you don’t mean that I’m to get in there as well? There isn’t space. I’d tip it over, getting in.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ Sosso said. He took the rope from Cornovacus and pulled the boat in close against the shore, then bent and steadied it with his other hand.

  ‘But . . .’ I began. Cornovacus caught me from the rear, and clamped a firm hand across my mouth.

  ‘By all the powers in Dis,’ he muttered in my ear, ‘keep your confounded voice down, or you’ll have half Glevum coming for a look. Now, do you want to get out of here or not? You know what’s happening. They’re looking for you in the town, there are guards on all the gates, and no doubt there’ll be a lookout on the roads by now. That leaves the river. How else are you gong to elude the guards?’

  He was right, of course, Glevum is a fine colonia but it isn’t Rome – they say there are close on a million people living there, and it is easy for a man to hide in such a crowd. Here it was different. Without a home, a patron, friends or family to shelter me, it was only a matter of time till I was found. But in that flimsy little flat-bottomed craft?

  Cornovacus had no patience with my doubts. He put his weight behind me and steered me forcibly to the waterside; half carried me, in fact, with his hand still firmly round my face so that I could not protest. Even so, when we reached the very edge and I looked down into that tiny craft, I baulked.

  Who knows how long I might have hesitated there, but the boatman said briskly, ‘Get him in, before I change my mind. We haven’t got all night.’

  He put the paddle on the shore, and, steadying himself on one of the wooden posts which had been driven in along the river bank, he reached up with his free hand and seized me round the knees. Cornovacus caught me at the same time from behind and between them they tumbled me into the centre of the boat. I lay there, paralysed with fright as it tipped wildly from side to side, but, with Sosso firmly holding it, it did not overturn as I was sure it would.

  I was just beginning to believe that the Sabrina would not swallow me that night after all, and was preparing to raise my head a little and look round, when I heard a splash and realised that Tullio had the oar and Sosso had let go the rope. We were adrift on the river in this cockleshell.

  ‘Keep down and in the very middle of the boat,’ the boatman said, and I tried hard to comply. ‘Further,’ he muttered, ‘or I’ll have to sit on you.’ I crammed my nose against the woven frame, with my knees drawn up against my chest. My nose was pressed ag
ainst a strake which reeked sickeningly of eels and pitch and something I did not care to think about, which he’d obviously been baiting his woven eel-traps with. The boat had begun to rock again, and I was certain that this time we would drown, but Tullio insinuated himself somehow into the space, and sat down by sitting over me, folding his legs in and over mine as if I were a kind of cushion for his knees. Thus wedged he pulled the paddle in – he had been using it to steady us, with one end forced against the bank – and began to ply it slowly to and fro, using it as a kind of rudder at the rear. The crazy pitching stopped and the boat took up a steady rolling rock.

  I tried to move to ease my aching back. It was impossible. The slightest movement rocked the boat, and anyway there was no room to stir an inch.

  ‘Sit still!’ hissed Tullio. ‘You’ll have us overboard. Keep down. It’s dark and there’s still a bit of mist, but there’s a light wind getting up so it won’t last for long. We won’t be the only boat that’s out tonight. Besides, we’ll soon be passing near the dock. There may be torches on the quay and we can’t have you seen. Keep still, don’t make a noise and – here – put this over you.’

  He raised one buttock as he spoke, and – at the risk of oversetting us – extracted what was obviously another sack and draped it over my face and feet so that I was swathed in sacking from head to toe. I was momentarily grateful for the extra warmth – I was by this time almost numb with cold – but like everything else aboard the boat, including the boatman and my outer tunic, the sack smelt horribly of eels. That, combined with the movement of the boat, was almost too much for me. I retched.