by Mike Ashley
He broke off with an impatient gesture, and led the way back to the centurion and the flute-boy.
“You can go,” he said to the latter with a smile, and clapped him on the back. “Take him into the kitchen,” he directed Lucius, “and wheedle Tuphus into giving him some aniseed cakes.”
Lucius took the flute-boy away.
“A further question or two, my friend, and you can go, too,” said Sollius to the centurion.
Decius mumbled under his breath, but appeared ready to answer, nevertheless.
“Had this missing Constans relatives in Rome?”
“A mother and an elder brother, a cobbler. Neither has heard of him. I was sent myself to find out.”
Sollius frowned, and once more rubbed his chin.
“Had he any special interest in life outside his being a soldier?” he asked after pondering silently for a while.
“Drinking and girls: I know of naught else,” answered the centurion bluntly and a little sourly.
“What was his character – as a soldier?”
“As a soldier? He wouldn’t be one of us,” said the centurion of the Prætorians proudly, “if he hadn’t a good name and a clean tablet in records.”
“Desertion has been hinted,” suggested Sollius.
“No Prætorian ever deserts!” roundly asserted the other. “The pickings are too good!”
“I know you are the most privileged troops in the Empire,” said Sollius placatingly. “But I am sure that you can tell me something that I ought to know – something that, perhaps, you don’t realize that you know yourself. Think for a moment quietly. Look at the carp there as you think; their quiet swimming about will help to compose your mind. I have often found it useful in that way. And then speak the first thing about this Constans which enters your thoughts, no matter how trivial or how silly it may seem – just the first thing that enters your head, centurion.”
Decius did as he was told, staring down at the carp in puckered concentration. Suddenly he began to laugh.
“What is it? What have you remembered?” cried Sollius eagerly.
“It was nothing, nothing at all,” replied Decius, still laughing, “but it was funny at the time. We all laughed about it. Anyway, he got a gold piece from the Emperor for it, and the promise of a gardener’s job when his service days are over. We’ve nicknamed him ‘the gardener,’ though I’ve never seen him dig in our camp garden all the while I’ve been stationed in Rome, and that is many years now, slave.”
“Why did the Emperor give him a gold piece? Go on, go on!” urged Sollius impatiently.
“It was this way,” answered the centurion leisurely, and laughing and smiling as he talked. “It was the Empress’s birthday, and we were paraded in her honour. We had a rose issued to each of us, and we were ordered in the march past to throw our roses in a heap at her feet, each file in turn. Constans had had a thick night at a tavern, and had come on parade without breaking his fast, but with a bunch of radishes hid in his tunic to chew while standing at ease before the Augusta’s arrival. We always have to parade hours before time! Well, somehow, after the roses had been issued to us and fastened in our helmets, Constans had the ill luck to drop his and lose it during a bit o’ drill we were put through to fill out the time. It was a real bit of evil luck, for he would be on the outside of his file as it marched past the Emperor and Empress, and it would have been seen that he had nothing to throw on the heap. Had he been on the inside it might have passed unnoticed, though an officer was level with the rank behind. However, there it was, and without his rose he was in a fair sweat, I can tell you. When the time came, what else could he do but fling down his bunch o’ radishes? Large ’uns, they were, too! Quite like prize ones! With luck, in such a shower o’ roses, they’d not have been noticed. But Constans was never a lucky man. We often say he’s the victim o’ the evil eye! Anyhow, the Empress saw it. Sharp eyes, as well as beautiful ones, has the Empress! And she whispered to the Emperor. After the parade Constans was summoned to the Empress’s footstool, and accused o’ being disrespectful and unsoldierly. He was like to be whipped, but he always had a tongue in his head, had Constans, and the cheekiness of a British gooseboy. I have served in Britain, and know! Well, he got out of it. Said they were his own growing. Said he thought it more of a real homage to the Empress to give her something of his own, and not a mere flower provided by the Senate! The Emperor laughed, and the Empress – though I don’t think that at first she had meant to be kind about it – took a look at the Emperor’s face – and fetched up a smile. All was safely over – and then the Emperor made his promise to take Constans on as a gardener when his time of service should be up. And he no gardener at all! Laugh! That night the whole barracks was one roar! Well, that’s all – and it can’t have anything to do with his disappearance now. It was over a year ago.”
“Thank you for telling me,” said Sollius quietly. “Thank you, too, for taking me to The Two Cranes. I’d not like to go there alone. I think that is all I want of you.”
“Then I’ll go back to barracks,” answered the centurion. “It’s been better than drilling, anyway, even if it has been o’ no use. If you want to know what I think, Constans is in the Tiber with some woman’s husband’s knife in him. Why there’s such a fuss about him is what puzzles me.”
He nodded, and marched away, whistling.
Lucius found Sollius still standing by the carp-pool.
“The flute-boy has gone,” he said.
Sollius did not answer.
“Have you discovered anything?” asked Lucius after a pause.
Sollius sighed.
“I am not sure,” he answered, and his face was grave and unhappy. “I do not like being – deceived. And I can see only deception, whichever way I look.”
Lucius stared at him.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Neither do I,” answered Sollius ruefully. “Is our master within?”
Lucius nodded.
Sollius went indoors, sought out the Senator his master, and put a single question.
“Why, yes,” replied Sabinus. “It is about three miles out along the Appian Way. I have had the honour of visiting there myself. How are your investigations getting on?” he asked anxiously. “It was on my recommendation that the Emperor is employing you in this matter, and I should not like you to – fail,” he whispered.
He looked at the slave questioningly, but Sollius did not respond in the confidential way that the Senator had expected.
“I have discovered hardly anything,” murmured Sollius. “But a swallow can smell spring ahead before he begins flying home from Africa!”
Sabinus dismissed him almost irritably.
“I am going to the Augustus’s palace, Lucius,” announced Sollius in the early evening of the same day. “I wish to ask Alexias one more question.”
The house of Sabinus stood in its own grounds, with extensive gardens, and the way from the house itself to the gates was long, winding and overshadowed by chestnut trees. It was growing dusk, and the sky was already filled with the first stars. Nearer the gates the trees were more crowded and the darkness more complete. Sollius strode on through the shadowy avenue in a deep muse. He was both sure and puzzled.
Something like a large corn-sack was suddenly and swiftly drawn over his head; his legs were knocked from under him; and then his hands were roped behind him, and his ankles were bound together at the same time. Evidently his assailants were two in number. And now, one taking his shoulders and the other his feet, he was carried away, half-smothered in the sack, he knew not whither.
He had not struggled with his captors, for he was not a man of violence. Except for being startled at first, he was not frightened. He was, in fact, intensely curious, eager to know what would happen next, for he knew that his abduction must have some connection with what he was investigating. He felt, too, that if they had been going to kill him they would have done so straightway.
They did not car
ry him very far, but transferred him to a vehicle of some sort, drawn either, he judged from the sounds, by a pair of horses or mules. Probably, he guessed from the creaking noise of four wooden wheels, it was some kind of a farmcart.
In this he was taken a considerable distance, but in what direction he had no means of telling. The cart was hooded, he judged, for all outside sounds seemed muffled – and by more than the sack over his head – even the voices of the driver and his companion. It was now quite dark, not only within the vehicle, but in the open air and the countryside through which they were passing. It must have been quite late at night when the cart suddenly stopped to the furious barking of watchdogs and the rattling of their chains in the kennels. He recognized the peculiar bark of one of them. It was, surely, a Gallic hound. Sabinus possessed one, which had been the gift of the Emperor himself. He was glad that none of the dogs was loose. To have him torn to pieces might be a good way to dispose of him with all the appearance of accident, and very unpleasant, indeed! But the longer he had thought – and he had had plenty of time for cogitation – the more sure he had become that no real violence was intended.
He was lifted out of the vehicle in the same manner that he had been lifted in, and carried into what seemed to be one of the outhouses of a farm. The corn-sack was taken from his head as he was laid against one of the mud walls, but neither his feet nor his hands were untied. A single clay lamp on the floor in one corner dimly lit the place. A number of spades and other agricultural implements were lying about, and he thought that his guess was probably correct, and that he was in an outbuilding of a farm, or perhaps of a country villa. He looked at the two men who had abducted him, and recognized neither; but he had not expected to recognize them. The dogs were still barking.
“Dost thou know why thou’st been brought here?” asked one of the men in a harsh, truculent voice.
“I think so,” quietly answered Sollius, blinking in the light of the lamp which the other man had taken up and was now holding close to the prisoner’s eyes. Sollius noticed that this second man was tall, lean and very straight of back.
“Thou’dst be a fool if not!” snarled the first man. “We have orders to tell thee to stop looking for the thief o’ – thou knowest what as well as I do.”
As he spoke he showed what he was holding in his hand: a short length of thin, knotted strangler’s cord.
“Well, thou seest, slave? And understandest?”
The other man straightened himself, and laughed.
“Thou canst not escape,” he said, and put down the lamp on a dusty tool-bench nearby.
Sollius looked at him.
“You, of course, are Constans,” he said.
“Oho!” laughed the Prætorian, in no way disconcerted. “Thou’rt a sharp one!”
He seemed more good-humoured than his fellow, who was scowling, thought Sollius, in a very horrible manner. How far would they go in torturing him? He wondered if what he had come to guess could really be right! If it was, he could laugh at the proceedings; if not, he was in a most miserable and fearful position – and might never know the truth. To die without knowing all about the affair shook his equanimity in prospect more than the actual danger in which he stood.
It was Constans who finally menaced him with a woodcutter’s axe, swinging it above his head, all his outward good-humour gone in a flash as his companion rasped out:
“A dead guesser can’t guess – right. But it might save your life – to guess wrong.”
“Dost hear, slave?” asked Constans, the axe still poised in air.
“What dost thou know?” demanded the other, fingering the knotted length of cord.
“Answer, slave!” said the Prætorian in a hissing whisper.
“I can tell what I know only to the Emperor,” answered Sollius, and hoped that his voice sounded firm.
“Leave the Emperor out of this!” said the man with the strangler’s cord.
“It is the Emperor’s business,” replied Sollius. “How, then, can I leave him out? I shall tell you nothing,” he added with as much show of courage as he could imitate, and even then he did not know whether he had cause for his worst fears – or not. Well, he had to test it, the one way or the other. “You can kill me,” he said huskily, “but you won’t get a word out of me. And you must not be too sure,” he added, blinking up at them, “that I have anything to tell.”
“Anything or nothing, our orders are the same,” said the man with the cord, and glanced at his companion.
Constans lowered the axe, and gave Sollius a nicely calculated blow with a chopping fist, and the slave knew no more.
When he came to himself, he found that he was lying near the gates of his master’s house, with Lucius bending anxiously over him, and two others of his fellow slaves standing by. It was still night.
“What happened, Sollius?”
“That,” replied Sollius ruefully, “is my question, not yours!”
“We heard a cry,” said Lucius, “and found you unconscious on the ground here.”
“It wasn’t my cry,” muttered Sollius.
“That is all we know.”
“It was a signal – to fetch you out,” whispered Sollius.
“Who attacked you?” asked one of the others.
“Help me up,” murmured Sollius.
They led him into the slaves’ quarters of the house, and attended to his bruises. He had more than one. He felt dizzy, and his head, neck and jaw ached most painfully. He was undressed and laid in his bed. Lucius watched over his uneasy slumbers until morning. It was not a long watch.
Sabinus, who had been informed of the “accident” to his favourite slave, came to see him with the first light.
“How did it happen, my good Sollius?” he asked.
Sollius answered with great care:
“I do not remember very much about it, lord. I was – thinking – and walking near the gates, and was suddenly attacked – and I remember nothing more until I was found by Lucius and the others.”
Sabinus rose from the stool on which he had been sitting, tiptoed to the door, and looked along the corridor outside the slaves’ dormitory with exaggerated caution. Then he returned, and speaking in a whisper, said:
“You have discovered something, then, my good Sollius? The thief tried to silence you? Excellent! You must tell the Emperor to-day.”
“Indeed, lord,” replied Sollius weakly, “I had intended to ask for an audience to-day. I have not told you everything – but on second thoughts, lord, I will. I was more than just attacked,” he went on, his voice gathering strength as he related the rest. “I was abducted, too.”
Sabinus, after he had heard the whole of his slave’s adventures, rubbed his hands.
“Excellent, Sollius, excellent!” he cried, beaming. “You are clearly on the right track. I am well pleased with you! I will myself accompany you to the Augustus.”
Marcus Aurelius received them again in his small, plainly furnished, private chamber, filled with innumerable books and scrolls and scroll containers. There were just the four of them: the Emperor, Sabinus, Alexias and Sollius.
“You say,” said the Emperor, a slight smile on the lips under his beard, “that you have discovered the thief of the Empress’s jewels. This is quick work, Sabinus!”
The Senator, in a fluster of pleasure and self-satisfaction, bowed. He might have spoken had the Emperor given him the opportunity, but Marcus Aurelius, used to quelling the loquacity of senators, immediately addressed Sollius again:
“Have you the jewels?”
“No, sir,” answered Sollius.
The Emperor frowned.
“But you know the thief?”
Sollius hesitated briefly, and then answered:
“If, O Augustus, I may set out what I take to be the circumstances, I think that you yourself will be able to name – the culprit.”
“I shall be interested in every word you say,” replied the Emperor. “Let me hear!”
“I ha
ve had many suspicions,” Sollius began, “chasing one after the other like a dog after many hares. First, I suspected Marcia, the Augusta’s waiting-woman, but there were no true signs pointing to her, and both she and Alexias seemed so genuinely puzzled – I had toyed with the idea of both of them being in league. I soon dismissed both from the case; but I had to consider them.”
He glanced apologetically at the Emperor’s Greek freedman, but received only a glare in response. He sighed, and went on:
“Have I your pardon, Augustus, for aught I may say? You have commanded me to tell you everything, yet if I do – ”
He spread out his hands.
“Offence may come!” he whispered.
“I am no Caligula or Nero,” replied Marcus Aurelius gravely. “Tell me everything you had in mind.”
“Sir, I wondered whether the Empress herself might not have – secretly sold them.”
“The Empress – sold them!” exclaimed Marcus Aurelius incredulously.
“For the money,” pursued Sollius quietly.
“But the Empress,” said Faustina’s husband, “has no need of money.”
“Perhaps,” Sollius suggested in a lower tone, “to pay some debt of Prince Commodus.”
The Emperor frowned.
“But I have just this morning paid his debts myself,” he said in a voice of half-angry distaste.
“I am only relating my suspicions, O Augustus, in the order of their crossing my mind. I found out that I was certainly wrong in this one.”
“Found out? How?” questioned the Emperor, very seriously.
“I had enquiries made in the quarter of the money-changers,” the slave answered. “But no jewels had recently been offered for sale, or pledged, and Prince Commodus had been seeking a loan – before this morning, Augustus! – so no jewels had been sold for his benefit. And when the Prætorian was missing I was all the more certain of the Augusta’s innocence. It was, in fact, the disappearance of the Prætorian which set me upon the right way. For, sir, a Prætorian does not ‘disappear’ – discipline in the Guards is too strong. But had he been murdered – because he knew something that it would be fatal to the thief for me to discover? Yet, had he been murdered, his body should have been found, probably near the tavern of The Two Cranes in the Subura. But it is clear that he left there, at least, safely. I decided that he had not been killed, but just – removed out of my way. That brought back into my mind the lack of evidence that there was concerning a theft at all.”