‘But husband . . .’ the poor woman wailed, looking around her tiny house despairingly. It was clear that she was wondering where I was to be put.
‘No buts, wife,’ Tullio said. ‘The matter’s settled. Now, fetch us a drink. Our guest is thirsty. We have been walking for a long time.’
The woman looked resentful, but she did as she was told. She went to the pot that was hanging on the fire, and a moment later I was holding a rough bowl of something warm. It smelled and tasted strongly of eel, but it would have been impossible to refuse. I swallowed it, feeling the liquid warmth seep through my bones.
Meanwhile the woman roused her children from their bed and divided their bedding-reeds into two unequal piles, of which the largest was assigned to me. Sensing that protest would only make things worse, I lay down gratefully, taking off my mantle to spread it over me.
As I did so I realised, with no real surprise, that the coin which I had tied into my hem was gone. I smiled ruefully – remembering how Cornovacus had clapped me on the back. One had to admire his skill, but it had taught me what I wished to know. I must be on my guard. Sosso’s gang might be working for me now, but still they would lose no opportunity to rob me if they could.
I waited until Tullio and the woman were in bed before I removed my chafing sandals from my feet and slipped the aureus into my belt. Then, taking care to lie across my purse, I shut my eyes.
When I opened them again, broad daylight was streaming through the door. The beds were empty and Tullio was gone. His wife was sitting outside the doorway, gutting fish, while two of the children scrabbled at her feet, and the baby slept fitfully in the basket at her side. I got rather stiffly to my feet and, stooping as I passed the entranceway, went out to talk to her.
As soon as she saw me she paused in her task, and went to fetch me water in a cracked earthen cup, together with a hunk of ageing bread. It was not an appetising meal, but from the envious looks the children cast at me I understood that it was more breakfast than they’d had themselves. They watched me in grave silence as I ate.
I tried to have a conversation with the wife, but it was well-nigh impossible. She seemed embarrassed by the presence of a man, and would only answer in a word or two if I asked her a direct question, and not always then. She was called Capria, I learned – the name means ‘nanny-goat’ so whether it was Tullio’s half-affectionate sobriquet for her, or whether she was a land-child and called that from birth, it was difficult to guess. She had five children and had buried three more, all of cold and hunger in the bitter winter a year or two ago.
She answered my queries like a slave, obedient and polite, but blank. I wanted to discover more, so I continued to press for information long after normal politeness would have forced me desist. The older children were with Tullio, she said, collecting worms to go and fish for eels. There were few eels in the river at this time of year, but there were always some, and that was what the family chiefly ate. In spring especially, there were lots of fish: Tullio made traps for them, and sold them in the town to pay for cloth and grain and oil, and other necessities of life.
I could think of nothing else to ask, and she was volunteering nothing, that was clear. She had cause to be resentful, I realised suddenly. This little house was safe from those who did not know their way across the marsh, and I could see why Sosso had suggested it. All the same she was afraid – not just of me, as I had thought at first, but of the risk that I posed to her family by simply being here.
I made a last attempt at friendliness. I gestured to the fish that she was filleting. ‘And sometimes there are fish to spare?’
For a moment the thin face was brightened by a smile. ‘Sometimes, at some seasons of the year, there are so many fish you can walk out to the shallow pools left by the tide and catch the stranded salmon in your hands.’ The smile faded. ‘Then we might eat some of them ourselves. But mostly it is eels.’ She lapsed into silence once again, and went on with her task.
So even the fish that she was gutting was on my account. I felt a rush of sympathy for her. ‘Perhaps, if I am to stay here in the house, there is something that I can do to help? If your children are collecting worms, for instance? I don’t know much about it, but I could do that too, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps.’ She did not look at me.
I said with sudden inspiration, ‘If any soldiers come this way, that would be a good disguise. They won’t be looking for a fisherman.’
She looked at me without curiosity. ‘When my husband returns, he can show you how. Until then, better wait inside the hut.’
It seemed a very long time until Tullio came back. I watched the wintry sun move halfway round the sky. Then I sat down on the bedding pile to think, wondering where Sosso and his men were now, and whether they could possibly discover anything that would help my cause.
I doubted it. The case against Marcus looked very dark indeed. First there was the death of Praxus – and, much as I wanted to believe in my patron’s innocence, I could not see who else could possibly have managed that.
Then that treasonable document had been discovered in Marcus’s house. Of course it was always possible that someone else had put it there after Marcus was arrested, knowing there would be a search – but again, it was hard to see how it was done. Not only was the villa under constant guard once the death of Praxus had occurred, but the incriminating letter was sealed with Marcus’s own seal. Yet Marcus wore his seal-ring on his finger all the time. He was wearing it on the evening of the feast – I’d noticed it – so no one could have forged the letter later on because the ring had gone with him to jail. I sighed. If I was Emperor Commodus, I thought, I would have found Marcus guilty straight away.
And yet, and yet . . . Someone had killed Golbo too. The authorities weren’t interested in the mere murder of a slave, but surely it had to be significant? Marcus didn’t do it – he was locked up at the time – although it was just possible that he had ordered it. But now someone was having me consistently pursued – not through the usual legal channels, but by Bullface and his men – and I was quite sure that Marcus wasn’t responsible for that.
I sighed. It was physically alarming, but a comfort mentally – it convinced me that there was someone else involved and that I was not a fool to go on questioning.
‘Citizen?’ Tullio’s gruff voice from the doorway made me start. I scrabbled to my feet. ‘I believe you offered to help us with the eels?’
I nodded.
‘Then come now, and I’ll show you how it’s done. We shall be glad of assistance. Sosso has sent word. He’s found your poet. I am to go and guide him through the marsh.’
He turned without a further word and led the way. I followed, taking care to plant my feet exactly where he’d planted his, until we came to more solid ground, where the two older children were busy doing something with a length of wool.
‘Watch them,’ said Tullio, and set off through the reeds.
It was not a complicated task, and not a pleasant one. The two boys were digging for worms and threading them lengthways along the coarse strand of home-spun yarn with the aid of a piece of sharpened bone. I watched them for a while, and then assisted in the provision of the worms. The threading exercise was more than I could bear. They, on the other hand, were quite adept at it, and very soon there was a sizeable length of worms, strung end to end, like so many squirming beads. My remarks and questions were ignored. Like the rest of the family, it seemed, these boys were used to working hard and speaking little.
‘Enough,’ the older one said suddenly. It was the first word that either child had addressed to me. He took the length of wool, tied the loose end firmly round a stick, and wound the string of worms around it so it formed a ball. Then he took it to the waterside, and plunged it in. ‘You?’ he said, and handed me the pole. He went back to his brother who, meanwhile, had pulled out another length of wool, and was beginning to create another string.
I was unsure what they expected me to do, but it soon b
ecame self-evident. There was a wriggling in the mud, a tug, and a moment later several eels – one of them quite large – were biting at the wool. I let out a howl of surprise and almost dropped my piece of wood, but the older boy was with me in a flash.
He looked scornfully at me and seized the stick, which he simply lifted to the shore. The eels, much to my surprise, clung on – too dedicated to their gruesome feast to let it go – until the younger boy came up with a sharpened stone and severed them just below the head. Even then the greedy, nasty little jaws remained clamped firmly to their prey, and had to be prised off with a piece of flint. I have never cared for eels very much, but this revolted me.
The carcasses were flung into a plaited basket waiting on the bank. ‘A good spot for eels,’ I said nervously.
The older boy gave me that look again. ‘Better in the dark. You should see them in the season,’ he said bitterly, and handed me the eeling pole again.
So that was how Tullio and Loquex found me, later on, standing by the river, trying to catch eels on a stick.
XXIII
Tullio acknowledged my offering with the briefest grunt of thanks. ‘Here is your poet,’ he said shortly. ‘You stay here and talk to him – we’ll take these eels home. Better if the boys don’t overhear – the less they know, the happier their mother will be. This spot is safe enough. I’ll come back and get you later on. Come, lads!’ He signalled to his sons, and off they went.
Loquex looked at me suspiciously. ‘What is the meaning of all this? What do you want with me? I was told that I was coming here to see a citizen, acting on behalf of Marcus Septimus, otherwise I would never have agreed to come. I thought I was being taken on a short cut to the villa, but instead I find myself brought here to a swamp, to talk to a fisherman.’
‘I’m not a fisherman,’ I said, belying the assertion as I spoke by picking up my stick and landing another wriggling eel on the end of it. I tossed the whole thing to the bank – the eel did not let go. ‘Not by profession, anyway. I am indeed a citizen, a protégé of Marcus Septimus, and I was at the feast. I heard your poetry.’
I added this in the hope of flattering him, but the effect was unfortunate.
‘And so did everyone. It isn’t fair. I am invited to perform. I do my best, but nobody pays me what they promised me. No time to claim it – I’m just hustled off and told to come back another day. And then what do I hear? His Excellence is under garrison arrest, and no communication is allowed. What happens to the money I am owed? It took me several hours to write that verse, and find out all the information too.’
‘What information?’
‘To write my tributes. People never think of that. Just scribble a few verses, that’s what they think I do. They never think of all the work involved. I only recited a tiny bit of it, and wasn’t paid an as.’
‘Gaius Praxus came from Gaul
He’s very brave and very tall?’
I quoted. ‘You must have needed a lot of information to write that?’
Loquex was oblivious of irony. ‘You were there,’ he said eagerly. ‘You remember it?’
‘Who could forget?’ I muttered, softening the comment with a smile. Loquex was preening and I saw my chance. ‘Would you like the opportunity to recite the rest? What was Marcus going to pay you for the task?’
‘Six silver pieces.’
Six denarii. I could afford it, now that Julia had given me some coins, but it was an inflated sum. I thought quickly. ‘Of course that was a fee for writing it, and declaiming it before an audience,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you half as much if you’ll recite it now.’ I saw him hesitate and added swiftly, ‘That way it won’t be a total loss, and your fine verse will reach one listener, anyway.’
He looked around doubtfully. There was nothing to be seen except the reeds, the eeling stick and the marshy ground. ‘What, here?’
I nodded, and he cleared his throat. He took up a theatrical stance and launched himself into his verse. ‘Marcus Aurelius Septimus, just and fair . . .’ he began.
If I hoped to learn anything from this, I was disappointed. The verse was every bit as bad as I recalled, and went on even longer than I feared. Far from concentrating on the most important guests, Loquex had managed a line or two about every single one. I listened carefully, but apart from a passing mention that the high priest of Jupiter had lands in Gaul, Balbus’s younger brother had been rising fast, and Councillor Gaius had got himself a younger wife – none of which fascinating facts had reached my ears – there was nothing of significance in any part of it, just a series of statements of the obvious. By the time he concluded the final stanza – which even mentioned me – my eyes were ready to glaze over. Loquex was looking at me expectantly.
‘Quite a feat,’ I said at last, trying to disguise my disappointment as I reached into my belt to find the coins. ‘You did well to remember all that without your scroll.’
‘As you said earlier, citizen, it is not easy to forget – especially when you have written it yourself. Of course,’ he added modestly, ‘I’m slightly famous for my memory.’
‘In that case, perhaps you can remember everything that happened at the feast?’ He looked about to launch into an account, so I added hastily, ‘After you left the dining room that night?’
‘Well, Marcus and the others cut me off, clapping before I’d properly begun,’ he said resentfully. ‘I was ushered out, into the court and round to the back door. That’s all. I tried to claim the money I was owed, but I was hurried to the entrance by a slave and told to present my bill another time.’ He looked at me. ‘I didn’t hear until next day that Praxus had been killed. I didn’t murder him, if that is what you are suggesting. Ask the slave who saw me out – he’ll tell you the same thing.’
I shook my head. The chances were the slave in question was in custody, being interrogated by other men – and no doubt by other methods. If there was anything to learn, the authorities were probably aware of it by now. But I persisted all the same. ‘Did you see anything in the corridor, or court? Anything at all unusual? Think carefully before you answer me.’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Not even servants from the dining room carrying wine and dishes to and fro – except the one who was accompanying me. He took me to the slave’s room to collect my coat, and when he picked me up again I noticed he had a plate of something in his hand. Oh, and there was a little bucket-boy as well, waiting outside the vomitorium: he seemed to be in trouble of some kind when I looked back into the court.’
I had difficulty keeping the excitement from my voice. ‘You came back to the court?’
He shrugged. ‘Not exactly. I intended to. The doorkeeper had been told to let me out, but I was so enraged at being hustled off halfway through my piece, without even being paid, that I asked the man to wait, intending to burst in on His Excellence and simply demand the money that was due. But as soon as I put my head round the colonnade and heard what was going on in the court I changed my mind and left.’
‘What was going on?’
‘The bucket-boy was being scolded for his idleness and ordered to clean the place at once, on pain of being whipped, because the feast would soon be over and the guests would want to visit the vomitorium again before they left for home. It all seemed very harsh to me – and quite unjustified. The room looked perfectly all right. But apparently his owner was seriously displeased.’
I found that I was standing like a statue, holding my breath. ‘Go on.’
‘It was all done very quietly, of course, so as not to disturb the guests, but sound always carries in a colonnade, especially a savage hiss like that, and obviously I could not help but overhear. Anyway, the lad got a savage cuff round the ear and was sent off to fill his bucket from a spring, which I gathered was outside in the grounds somewhere – without a torch-brand too, though it was clearly very cold and dark out there. I realised that if Marcus Septimus was in a mood like that, it obviously wasn’t a good moment to insist on being paid, so I slipped ba
ck to the doorkeeper at once, said I’d thought better of my plan and disappeared before the bucket-boy came back. The doorman had me in his sight throughout – as I’m sure he could testify. I had no opportunity to murder anyone.’
I nodded. ‘So who was hissing at the bucket-boy? A slave? Could you identify him again?’
‘Of course I could. It was the same slave that had shown me out. The one they call Umbris. He seemed to be in charge of everything. You must have noticed him.’
I breathed out slowly and let this sink in, remembering what Golbo had said. It tallied perfectly. Umbris sent Golbo from the court, apparently on Marcus’s command, at a moment of extreme convenience for anyone who had poisoned Praxus’s meal and expected him to stagger out and die. If Marcus hadn’t ordered that, who had? The slave could have no motive of his own, far less the money to buy poison with. Yet who else would Umbris take instruction from?
There was one obvious candidate, of course, suggested by something in Loquex’s narrative which had struck me forcibly. I asked, with a pretence at casualness, ‘Umbris talked about his “owner” ordering all this? He didn’t say “the master” – you are sure of that?’ Golbo, I remembered, had used the same word.
Loquex looked bewildered, but he answered instantly. ‘As I remember, citizen, “our owner” is what he said. Does it matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I meant it. Of course, there was nothing remarkable in the choice of word itself: ‘owner’ is interchangeable with ‘master’ in most instances. But what of the mistress of the house? Julia was owner, but not master, of the slaves. She had loathed Praxus for his sexual overtures to her – could she have taken this revenge on him? She was in the house throughout with access to the kitchens day and night, and so had every chance to slip something into wine or food – and to ensure it reached the proper guest. After the murder she was soon upon the scene. Suspiciously quickly, when one thought about the facts. Suppose she had instructed Umbris to send the bucket-boy away, because she knew that Praxus had eaten poisoned food and would very soon be struggling out to die in a way that – given the amount he drank – would hardly seem suspicious in the least.
The Ghosts of Glevum Page 20