Sosso nodded at him. ‘Succeed?’
‘It was easy, except for a pair of alarm geese that tried to hiss at me, but I managed to take care of them. I just dropped in among the bushes at the back and it was only a moment before a servant came along. It was a slave-girl, come to feed the geese.’
‘She didn’t scream?’ I said, trying to imagine what the poor girl must have felt, unexpectedly accosted in her owner’s private orchard by an unknown ragged man, who – knowing Lercius – most likely had an evil smile on his face, and a horribly dead goose in either hand.
Lercius grinned wider. ‘She didn’t get a chance. I came round behind her and covered up her mouth – then I showed her that wax writing tablet thing you gave to me. She didn’t struggle after that, so I put it in her hand and let her go. I think she was the one who brought it out, and once she saw it she accepted me. I didn’t even have to squeeze her very much,’ he added, with a suspicion of regret. He looked at Sosso proudly. ‘I told her what you said I was to say.’
‘No soldiers?’ Sosso said, ignoring this.
Lercius shook his head. ‘There are only two soldiers in that whole new annexe part – or so the slave-girl said. There were more to start with but apparently the owner’s wife made quite a fuss. Told the officer in charge that she didn’t want soldiers leering at her as she walked about, and demanded to have the women’s quarters to herself.’
I could scarcely suppress a smile at this. It was typical of Julia, I thought. It would be a strong man who could resist her pleas, if she looked demurely up at him under her beautiful brows as she smiled bravely and told him how distressed she was. I could imagine her deploying her considerable charms upon the centurion in charge. Julia was very skilled at obtaining her own way. ‘So the officer agreed?’ I said.
Lercius nodded. ‘That’s what comes of having looks and money, I suppose. For the lady they relaxed the guard. Inside that part of the house at least. Only those two guards posted at the exits now.’
Sosso had been listening closely. ‘And the rest?’
‘A dozen or so in the main part of the house, so the slave-girl says. When they come off duty, that is where they go. They’ve found the amphorae of wine that are sunk into the kitchen yard by now – judging by the noise they make, apparently. Otherwise, they’re watching at the gates and patrolling round the walls, to stop people getting in and out.’ He grinned again. ‘They’re not expecting trouble. The two that were in that women’s area were strolling up and down, not taking any notice of what went on. I glimpsed them when I was struggling with the geese. I’d thought they would discover me for sure – one of the stupid things did flap and squawk just once before I silenced it. But they scarcely glanced my way – too busy talking to one another.’ He winked. ‘Complaining about how boring it was, I expect. They didn’t even notice that there weren’t any pigeons about, when I gave you the signal that I was coming back.’
So that was how Sosso had known when to make his move. I was impressed. I’d registered the sound myself, but it had seemed so natural that it had not occurred to me that anything but a bird was making it.
‘And did you get the money?’ I enquired.
Lercius looked at me in surprise. ‘Money?’
‘I asked Julia for those four denarii,’ I said.
‘She’ll give you that herself, I expect,’ Lercius said. ‘When you go in.’
‘When I . . .?’ I looked at Sosso sharply. There was no way I could do what Lercius had done.
The dwarf just laughed, enjoying my obvious bewilderment. ‘That’s right. Give it to you then. More, if she’s got any sense.’ He was revelling in this, taunting me with hints, so it was clearly useless to ask anything outright. He gave another ugly little smile. ‘Remember your promise. Money every day. Or . . .’ He made that slitting gesture once again, and turned to Lercius. ‘You told her?’
‘I did. I said I did.’ Lercius was indignant. ‘Everything you told me, all about the cart, and bringing all the stuff in for the farm. At least I told the slave-girl. She said she’d tell her mistress and it would be arranged. I was lucky there. She knew this citizen.’ He turned to me. ‘You know the one. A chubby girl, with great big . . .’ He made gleeful grasping motions with his hands.
‘Enough!’ Sosso interrupted him. ‘But well done! Extra chicken stew for you. Come on.’ He did not pause, but led the way into the trees again, and once more I found myself following him blindly, as if I were the stranger in these woods and he had walked the paths for years. He moved so quickly that there was no more time for talk, and I struggled after him until (rather to my surprise, I confess) we branched out of the trees again and found ourselves in the clearing where the firewood-seller had his hut.
XIX
There had been trouble at the hut, that much was obvious. The meagre possessions which I’d seen earlier had been dragged outside and strewn haphazardly on the ground, while the roof and woodpile had both been pulled apart – with unnecessary violence, by the look of it. The wool from my dye-house lay in sodden piles and there were shards of broken pottery everywhere. Even Gwellia’s bowls of carefully sorted dyestuffs had been overturned. In the midst of all this chaos the old woman was scrabbling on her knees, trying to collect the pathetic objects together again as best she could.
She looked up wearily as we approached and I saw that her old eyes were filled with tears. ‘The soldiers, citizen,’ she murmured brokenly. ‘They have been here, searching everything.’
‘Soldiers? What were they doing here?’
Even as I framed the words, I knew what she would say. ‘Looking for you, citizen. I’m sure of it, although they didn’t say. When I asked questions, they just . . .’ She raised one hand to her wrinkled cheek and I felt a burst of anger as I saw the dull bruise darkening.
‘What kind of soldiers? Were they from the town? The garrison?’
She shrugged helplessly. ‘They were soldiers, citizen. That is all I know. Soldiers with armour, swords and leather skirts. Though, come to think of it, I’m sure they’re not the ones I’ve seen down in the lane. Great ugly men, these were, like brutes – the leader in particular.’
‘A brute with big shoulders and a face like an ox?’ I said, and saw from her expression that I had guessed right. This was the work of Bullface and his men.
She caught her breath. ‘You know the men?’
I nodded grimly. ‘I’ve seen them, once or twice. I know they’re after me. So they came here. I’m sorry. What happened then?’
‘They asked me who was hiding in the hut, and I said nobody. I tried to plead with them, saying we were poor and there was nothing there.’ She stifled a sob. ‘But they wouldn’t listen. They pushed past me – pushed me over – and went in. And then . . . did this. Turned the whole place upside down. Just picked up everything and threw it on the ground. Outside in the mud, of course. Scattered the woodpile, pulled down half the thatch. They even emptied out the water bowl, deliberately, all over that new wool and spoiled it. They threw away my remedies and ground them underfoot, although I begged them not to. The gods only know how I shall eke out a living now. But they wouldn’t stop. Poked at the bedstraw with their swords and then pulled it to the fire and let it burn.’
‘As well you’d given me the writing tablet, then,’ I said. I intended only to encourage her, but to my dismay I saw the helpless tears begin again. Obviously she hadn’t thought of that. If they’d discovered that, it would have meant the scourge for her at least.
‘Thank all the gods that you went with Sosso, citizen. If you had been here . . .’ She shivered.
If I had been there I would surely have been killed, and so would she. That was what she meant, and it was self-evidently true. Yet it puzzled me, when I considered it. Who had sent Bullface here to look for me? Not the commander of the regular Glevum garrison, it seemed. He had troops stationed at the villa, certainly, but when Lercius was there this afternoon there was no sign of activity or particular alert, as there
would certainly have been if official search parties were out. Lercius had been explicit on the point. Besides, the garrison commander was an old friend of Marcus’s: even if he had been seeking my arrest – perhaps as an unwilling witness or co-conspirator – he would have wanted me brought back alive.
An unofficial party then? That was an uncomfortable thought. Up until now I had supposed that Bullface and his men, although seconded from the legionary ranks to serve as Praxus’s private bodyguard, were still Imperial soldiers under arms and therefore subject to orders from above either from the garrison or some high-ranking individual. Specialist groups can be co-opted to civil tasks sometimes, while waiting for a posting to come through. That was how Mellitus had used them on the evening of the banquet, and I suspected that Balbus had attempted to do the same.
But was it simpler than that? Were they acting on their own account, determined to avenge their master’s death, either for themselves or for someone else? That was the most unnerving possibility of all – a small marauding private unit, under Bullface’s command, subject to no official scruples or restraint and operating outside the law. Did that explain why ‘soldiers’ had set fire to my hut – and why I had escaped the garrison in town, only to find Praxus’s guard awaiting me?
I was still lost in this disturbing line of thought when Lercius interrupted me. He was examining the contents of the hut with an expression of ill-disguised dismay. ‘What happened to our chicken stew?’ he blurted suddenly. It seemed a callous question, in the circumstances, but I was ashamed to realise that I had some sympathy. I had not eaten since my share of roasted eel the night before, and already I was feeling hunger-pangs.
‘The soldiers poured it all away. Most of the liquid seeped into the ground,’ the woman said, picking up the battered cooking pot. ‘But obviously I’ve rescued what I could.’ To my amazement she whipped off the lid, and revealed a little pile of broken chicken flesh. ‘Some of it got quite muddy, I’m afraid, and although I tried to clean it in the spring, until I get another water bowl I have no way to do it properly. But if you don’t mind . . .’
Mind? I’d have eaten through more mud than that to get at sustenance! Lercius clearly felt the same: he had already plunged a hand into the pot and was chewing greedily on a piece of thigh. Even Sosso abandoned his prowling round the hut and came over to join us at our feast.
We ate with our fingers, since there were no bowls – apart from Sosso who still had his knife, and used it to spear the choicest morsels for himself. It tasted wonderful despite the flecks of dirt – as things do to a starving man – and we made short work of it. Even the woman had a piece or two. I was just considering the empty pot, and wondering what Molendinarius would say when he returned to find that we had eaten all the food, when I looked up and saw him toiling up the track.
He was pushing his handcart, by the look of it, now piled high with something and covered by a dingy green-brown cloth. Behind him were two other figures whom I did not recognise at first, but as they drew closer I realised that it was Cornovacus and the pock-marked girl. At the same time I was aware of an unpleasant odour in the air, as if someone had been rolling in the drains.
‘Ah,’ Sosso grunted, wiping his ugly face on the hem of what had been my tunic. ‘They’ve come. Time for you to go.’
‘Go where?’ I asked, trying to forget the puzzle of the smell. I was beginning to trust that Sosso had a plan, since he’d plotted everything successfully till now. A plan was needed, too. It was already clear to me that it was no longer safe for me to stay here in the hut – and clearly the roundhouse and my workshop were equally dangerous. Bullface and his men would not give up. They would certainly be back to search for me again, and I had few illusions now about what I could expect if they once managed to lay hands on me. ‘Go where?’ I said again.
Sosso grinned. ‘Villa. Naturally. Need the money, don’t we?’
I gaped. ‘But I can’t . . .’ I made a despairing gesture. I tried for a moment to envisage myself shimmying up trees and leaping down from branches, as Lercius had done. I failed.
Sosso gave that throaty, mirthless laugh. ‘Don’t worry, citizen. No climbing walls. You get in through the gates.’ He gestured towards the firewood-seller’s cart. ‘See, there.’
Molendinarius swept off the cloth in a dramatic gesture, and the full stench of what it had covered reached my nostrils. It was unmistakable – rotten meat and decaying vegetables, with a fair admixture of human excreta too, I guessed. It was so powerful it almost made me reel.
Cornovacus nodded cheerfully. ‘Got it from the middens just outside the town,’ he said proudly. ‘Got all the members of our group on to it, worked them like a slavemaster, and – by Pluto and all the powers of Dis – they managed to get this together in an afternoon.’ He looked at me as if expecting to be complimented on this unlikely achievement.
‘What’s it for?’ I said guardedly.
‘It’s for the farm, of course,’ Molendinarius explained impatiently. ‘Buy this sort of thing, landowners do. Always a bit of money to be made, if you can get your hands on it and you’ve got a handcart you can move it on. Only, you tend to have to fight for it – everybody’s got the same idea.’
The idea of coming to blows over the contents of cesspits and rubbish heaps was new to me, but I was beginning to learn how the really poor and desperate could scratch a living from the most unexpected sources. Besides, I had other, more pressing, questions on my mind.
‘And how is this going to get me through the gates?’ If Sosso supposed that I would lie down on the cart and have that noisome mess spread over me, he would have to come up with some other plan. A man would choke to death in minutes from the smell.
Sosso bared his ugly tooth-stumps in a grin. ‘Push it.’
This time I fairly gaped. ‘Me? But I’ll be recognised.’
He chuckled; it was not a pleasant sound. ‘I doubt it, citizen.’
The pock-marked girl, who had been standing by, seemed to take courage at Sosso’s mirth, and ventured timidly, ‘Citizen, they’re not expecting you and if they were they wouldn’t know you now. No one ever looks at dungheapmen, in any case – they keep as far away as possible. Have you seen yourself?’
I had not, of course – there was nothing in the hut, not even a pail of clear water, that one could see one’s reflection in – but I realised instantly that she must be right. Not only was I wrapped in makeshift clothes and sacks, but I knew my hair was matted and my face unshaved, and parts of me still bore faint streaks of mud. Also, there was a cut above my eye, and I could feel that it was swollen and my cheek was bruised. No one who knew the old Libertus would glance twice at me.
‘Besides,’ the girl went on, ‘I shall be there to help.’
I was on the point of asking what help she would be, when Sosso said suddenly, ‘Enough! Come on!’ and there was nothing for it but to go.
XX
We trooped in silence down the little path back towards the lane. I had a hundred questions, but I was wheeling the lopsided cart and that took all of my concentration until we reached the wider track, and it was not a great deal easier even then. I am accustomed to handcarts – I have one of my own – but this one had a damaged wheel and the resultant lurch made manoeuvring it a misery. The stinking contents shifted at every bump and fissure in the road, and threatened to fall off and shower me. I marvelled how the one-handed miller had managed it. The smell was perfectly atrocious, too.
Nor did my companions offer any help. The old woman had remained behind, still collecting up the strewn possessions from the hut, and Parva had forged ahead of us somewhere. As soon as we reached the public road the other men withdrew into the trees, leaving me to wheel the thing alone.
I turned towards them to protest but they were gone. I was horrified. Suppose I was walking into a trap? Sosso had not fully explained his plan to me, or told me what I was supposed to do. It would have been very easy for Cornovacus to have called into the garrison and
offered to betray me for a price. I did not like this feeling of being in other people’s hands – especially a band of vagabonds and thieves.
I gave the handcart a bad-tempered push, with the result that it lurched into a deepish rut and stopped with a jerk that almost lost the load.
I thought unkind thoughts about the Fates and stooped to extricate the wheel from the hole. When I looked up there was a soldier on the road in front of me, stationed so that he would block my path. The Fates, I thought, had evidently heard. For a moment I contemplated abandoning the cart and bolting for the trees myself, but I had just sufficient self-restraint to see the idiocy of that.
If Sosso’s plan was going to work at all, I could expect to meet a soldier at some stage. This encounter was the test of it. I was supposed to be delivering fertiliser to the villa from the town, and this was an appropriate route for doing it – not the main military road where a poor man would be obliged to take to the verges on the way, but this steep and bumpy lane where at least I could occupy the track until it joined up with the wide and gravelled road which led to the main entrance of the villa. Of course I could hardly turn up there like a visitor, but beside the front gate was another track that led round to the farm and to the inner gateway at the back. If the perimeter of the villa was patrolled, I would have to get used to passing the guards.
I ruffled my thinning hair as far as possible across my face, hunched my shoulders and lurched off towards the soldier down the lane.
It was the same man that we’d seen earlier, but this time there was no sign of an alarm. He didn’t even draw his sword. He simply nodded at me as I approached, and asked me brusquely what my business was.
‘Fertiliser from the streets,’ I said, lifting up a corner of the cloth so that he could see, and also obtain the full benefit of the smell. ‘They take it at the villa, to put round the plants.’
The Ghosts of Glevum Page 17