The chief slave looked doubtful. ‘He said the same of you – told me that you were the only man round here who had the wits to make a daring plan like this, and then think fast enough to take account of changing circumstances. He even wondered if you were really ill at all: there are herbs that will bring sickness and dreaming-fever on, he said, and he wouldn’t put it past you to have taken them, to give yourself a convincing alibi. You had the imagination to think of such a scheme, the cleverness to judge the doses right, and enough cool arrogance to see it through – forgive me, citizen. Those were his very words.’ He essayed a feeble smile. ‘I suppose it was a sort of compliment.’
If so, it was the most roundabout compliment I have ever heard – I’ve received more flattering insults in my time. I was still struggling to think of some response when Aulus chimed in with a practical remark.
‘Well, whatever he is, he’s well and truly down the lane by now. Though I suppose that if Malodius is on his way, you could send him out again to pick the doctor up – tell him the master needs him urgently and it’s vital that he brings him back at once. The cart would do that, if a runner can’t.’
The steward looked at him with something like respect. ‘Aulus, I do believe you’re right. And I’ve not forgotten that you helped us earlier. Remind me to put your duty schedule back to normal, with immediate effect.’ He turned to me. ‘I had thought of sending Pulcrus on a horse, but he’s in the atrium with the master, and I’d have to go in and explain all this before he’d be released – and if this citizen is right about the medicus it wouldn’t have been sensible, in any case.’
‘You could send Marcus’s carriage,’ I suggested. ‘That’s not being used.’
He shook his head. ‘It was used this morning and it’s being cleaned. I got a couple of the stable boys to make a start on it, since Malodius has been doing something else. Besides, I’d have to send an escort, I suppose, otherwise the doctor might try to clamber out along the way.’ He was finding excuses, that was obvious.
‘And the master would have to give permission for all that as well?’ The gate-keeper was outwardly respectful, but he gave me an exaggerated wink behind the chief slave’s back. I knew what he was signalling. It was transparent to the merest idiot that the steward did not want to face his master until the doctor had been found. I could understand that. If Marcus had received another ransom note, he would be more than usually upset.
‘It had better be Malodius,’ the steward said.
‘Well, in that case, you had best be quick,’ Aulus said. ‘I can see him, through the spyhole, coming now.’ Sure enough, a moment later there was the faint clatter of hooves and cartwheels in the lane.
The steward brightened, happy that there was something he could do. ‘I’ll go out and stop him before he goes round to the back – he can’t get past the slave cart anyway.’ He bustled off, and a moment later we heard the sound of muffled cursing from the gate and a great deal of snorting as the horses were backed up.
‘So,’ Aulus said in a grumbling tone, as the commotion died away. ‘I’m returned to normal duties. And about time too. That steward’s had me standing sentry for so many hours I began to think I’d soon be taking root.’ He took a step towards me. ‘And if he has quite finished what he’s doing with that cloak, perhaps I can have it back sometime, before I freeze to death.’
I was a guest of Marcus’s and of course there was no threat, but Aulus is not the sort of man to argue with. I was already in the process of removing the offending article before I took in the force of what he’d said. ‘If who’s finished with the cloak?’ I said, pausing in the act of loosening the ties. ‘I thought I was the one who’d borrowed it. Do you mean Junio, my slave?’
Aulus did not have a lot of forehead, but he furrowed what he had. ‘I meant that confounded chief slave, naturally. He came here this morning and demanded it. Told me that it was needed to test out an idea. I might have known he wanted it for you.’
‘I didn’t ask . . .’ I began, and stopped. I was going to protest that it was not my doing that he’d lost his cloak, but since I was still actually wearing it, I could see that this was unlikely to convince.
Aulus misinterpreted my comment, anyway. ‘I dare say you didn’t specify that he should borrow mine, but of course it had to be my cloak he chose to use – he’s always had it in for me, that man. I had a niche to shelter in, he said, and I would be all right. He ought to try it sometime, with just a tunic on. But he’s the senior steward, so I hadn’t any choice. I simply do as I’m told. All the same,’ he bent towards me so that his massive face was just an inch from mine, ‘if you have quite finished your little experiments, I’d like to have it back.’
I stripped it off and handed it to him – anything to make him straighten up. The whiff of onions and bad breath was overpowering. He didn’t move.
‘What did the steward want it for, in any case?’
‘Why are you asking me? To see if he could be recognised from a distance, when the hood was up, he said.’ Aulus’s face took on a different look. ‘I hope you found it useful?’ he said, suggestively.
He was asking for a tip. Now I was really in a fix. I had no money with me – I hadn’t brought my purse – but to refuse him was to double my offence. And I could make no sense at all of Aulus’s account. Who could have asked the steward to do anything like that? The doctor, perhaps? Pretending to test out his so-called theory – when he must have known the answer all along? I could see that sounded feeble, but it was the only explanation I could find. ‘The steward didn’t borrow your cloak on my account,’ I said. ‘My slave found it hanging in the servants’ room, and obviously, since you weren’t using it . . . But here he is in person. You can ask him for yourself.’
But there was no time for asking questions. Junio was as pink and flustered as the steward had been before, and he made no excuses for addressing me without any of the usual courtesies. ‘Master! There you are! Thank Jupiter I’ve found you and you’re safe and sound. You are wanted in the house. We have been looking for you everywhere.’
‘We?’
‘Myself, and Cilla and Porphyllia and – when we couldn’t find you – several of Marcus’s household too. There were already servants searching all the outbuildings and grounds, trying to find the doctor. He seems to have disappeared as well.’
‘That is what I’m doing here,’ I said. ‘I came to help the steward look for him.’
Junio ran a hand across his brow. ‘Well, thank all the gods I found you. When I came back with that drink of mead you asked for, and you were nowhere to be found, I thought – well, it doesn’t matter what I thought – but you had us all concerned. Then someone suggested looking over here – and there you were. As safe as anything!’
I had to smile at that. He sounded more indignant than relieved, the way worried people do – like a mother when her errant child comes home. ‘Meanwhile my cup of mead was going cold, I suppose?’ I teased.
He realised that he must have sounded inappropriate. He offered me his arm and added, in a humbler tone of voice, ‘I am sincerely glad to find you, master. Do you wish me to assist you to your room?’ He was already tugging me into the court, and I was happy that he should. It solved the problem of Aulus and his tip – for the moment anyway.
‘I’ll talk to you again,’ I said to him, and allowed Junio to lead me away. The last I saw of the gate-keeper, he was scowling after us and wrapping his cloak round himself with the air of someone going to meet the beasts.
‘You say that I am wanted?’ I said to Junio, as he led the way into the house by the servants’ corridor again. ‘Aren’t we going to Marcus in the atrium? I hear there’s been another ransom note.’
He shook his head. ‘Marcus hasn’t asked for you,’ he said. ‘We are going back to your sleeping room. Marcus said you were to have some rest, and you are more than ready for it, by the look of you. And . . .’
He was right. I had been so interested in the doctor’s
disappearance that I had forgotten my own ills, but I was much more weary than I had realised. However, I would not admit to that, and I tried to lean less heavily on his arm.
‘And?’ I enquired. ‘There was another thing?’
He nodded. ‘There is someone there I know you’ll want to see.’
‘And that is?’ The doctor? Myrna’s mother? Her sister? Even Lallius? I was imagining a hundred possibilities, but none was as welcome as the truth turned out to be.
Junio could disguise his glee no longer and he broke into a grin. ‘Master, I thought you would have guessed. It’s Gwellia – your wife. She came with Kurso through the back gate just a little while ago. They’ve just got back from Glevum and she wants to talk to you.’
Chapter Twenty-five
Not nearly as much as I longed to talk to her! Relief and gladness knocked the strength from me. I was every bit as weary as Junio thought I was, and it was beyond my capabilities to run, but I did my very best. I hurried through the house and out into the court at an undignified hobble, and did not pause until I reached the doorway of my room.
‘Gwellia!’
She was waiting for me, looking as beautiful as it is possible for a lady of almost fifty years to look when she is scowling in obvious concern. It was not possible to sweep her up into my arms, as I would have liked to do – there were servants present, and we were guests in Marcus’s house – but I crossed the room and seized her by the hands. ‘Gwellia!’ I said again. ‘I have been so worried about you.’
‘Me?’ She squeezed my fingers and released herself. Her eyes were fringed with tears. ‘It’s you that we should be concerned about. Look at you! Out in the courtyard in the rain, without a covering – and after you have been so ill, as well. You’ll catch a chill on top of everything, and I’ll have to nurse you all over again.’ She patted the pillows and the bed. ‘Come on, lie down. I know you, husband. You’re in need of it.’
I was. I was suddenly overwhelmed with love and weariness. I did as she commanded and reclined, while my servants took off my sandals and pulled the covers over me.
Gwellia was still scolding – I knew it was her way of showing how much she cared for me. ‘And what have you been up to while I have been in town? Up to your investigative tricks, I understand? I’m surprised that Marcus has permitted it. Obviously you’re very far from well. And it is more than your health that you have put at risk. I hear that doctor has brought a charge against you, and Marcus has you more or less under arrest.’
I heaved a happy sigh. ‘But that’s all over now. Without an accuser there can be no case. And I don’t think he’ll be back. You know what happened here?’ I began to offer an explanation, but she interrupted me.
‘Cilla and Junio have told me everything. Of course Kurso and I already knew that something was amiss. We looked in at the roundhouse on our way here, so that he could see to the animals and pick up any eggs – but we found a soldier standing guard beside the gate. He actually refused to let us go inside.’
I thought privately that perhaps it was as well, since the house would certainly have been ransacked in the search, but I knew how upset Gwellia would have been to come home unexpectedly to that. ‘It was because they found the ransom bag . . .’
‘Of course, husband, I know that now, but at the time the soldier wouldn’t tell us anything at all – and we very nearly got arrested too. If that cart-driver hadn’t come along and agreed to bring us to the villa in the cart, I believe we would have been tied up and locked in the dye house until reinforcements came.’ She had waved the slaves aside by now, and was plumping up my pillows with her own hand as she spoke – with a vigour which left me in no doubt as to what a shock all this had been.
‘You came here with Malodius?’ I said foolishly, as I snuggled luxuriously back into the bed.
She gave a short laugh. ‘Malodius – the evil-smelling one! Is that his name? I never heard it mentioned, but he deserved it, certainly. I’ve rarely had a more smelly and uncomfortable ride. I was forced to sit quite close behind him at the front. He already had that poor woman and her children on the cart – though goodness knows how anyone can think she was involved in any kidnapping. I’ve never seen a woman so frightened in my life.’
I was sufficiently interested to struggle up again. ‘He found her, then? Where is she? I ought to question her.’
She urged me back on to my cushions with a firm and wifely hand. ‘Then, husband, you will have to wait your turn. Marcus is proposing to speak to her himself. I saw her led away to wait for him.’ She shook her head. ‘Though I doubt that he will get very much from her. Poor lady, she is too frightened to tell him anything. I spoke to her a little in Celtic on the way – in the hope that old Smelly wouldn’t understand. She says that you found her at a house earlier today – someone had turned the whole place upside down and most of the valuables were gone. She is sure that she has been arrested in connection with the thefts – though she swears she hasn’t taken anything herself.’
‘It’s more serious than robbery,’ I said. ‘There was a woman murdered in that house.’
My wife was not as startled as I expected her to be. She shook her head. ‘I’m sure the woman in the cart didn’t know anything about a death. It was the missing items she was concerned about. She said there was a wooden money chest and some pretty silverware which were usually kept in a recess beside the fire, and she noticed that both were gone. She was sure that you would suspect her of taking them, unless the owner of the house came back and told you otherwise. An old woman who made herbal remedies, I understand, and made quite a little living out of them?’
‘She was the mother of the wet nurse who worked here,’ I said. ‘Myrna – the girl whose corpse we discovered in the house. I’m almost certain that she was involved in Julia’s kidnapping, and that her murder was somehow a result of that.’
Gwellia frowned. ‘But why would a wet nurse want to ransom Lallius?’ she asked. She gave a little smile. ‘In fact, when you listen to what I’ve got to tell, you might wonder why anybody would. I’ve been talking to his household servants for a while, and I can tell you this: his father would not have done anything to help – bribed the girl or anything like that – if that was what you had supposed. He has been far too ill in any case – but he would not have chosen to. He’d made it clear he would not speak to Lallius again, and even told the servants not to lend him cash.’
I had propped myself up on my elbow once again, but this time she made no move to force me to lie down. ‘Perhaps Myrna was a secret lover of Lallius?’
Gwellia gave a derisive snort. ‘Not according to the servants. Lallius’s interests did not lie that way. He preferred the company of boys, and even then he had to purchase them. He was not the sort of person who had many friends at all. In fact, it seems that he had only one – and that was another rather feckless youth, with tastes that the old man thought were equally depraved – a good deal too much wine, and gambling, and a fondness for hiring pretty slave-boys for the night and indulging in the most exotic food – peacocks’ tongues, and gilded swans, and all that sort of thing. The other boy could afford it – he’d recently inherited estates – but Lallius could not. He borrowed from the money-lenders. It scandalised Numidius, of course.’
I could imagine that from what I knew of the old man. He was the personification of cautious respectability: famously careful where money was concerned – he would walk a mile to save a quadrans, people said – and his hawk-like face and bony frame suggested that he was equally frugal with his meals. It was rumoured that he’d never held a banquet in his life – or been a guest at one.
‘So he was tired of paying Lallius’s debts? The boy did have an allowance from his father, I suppose?’ I said. The leisured sons of Roman citizens were usually given one. It was called a peculium, like the allowance of a slave, and it wasn’t very different from that in some respects. Unless a son was legally emancipated by a court, any who lived at home, of whatever age, was
still under the legal power of the paterfamilias. And apart from anything he earned from military service, a son legally owned nothing of his own. Most young men married dowried women and set up households of their own, but Lallius had never done that. And no doubt his father gave him the minimum. Numidius was anxious to appear as like a Roman citizen as possible, but being generous to an idle son would not come easily to a man like that – especially when the youth had been born inside the walls and had the privileged status which he himself coveted.
Gwellia seemed to read my thoughts. She smiled. ‘An allowance, certainly, though not a very large one, I believe. Even then Numidius had threatened several times to cut it off, because his son was always running into debt and “bringing the family name into disrepute” he said. There was even talk of sending Lallius to the legions for a spell in the hope that a bit of army discipline would help to sort him out – Numidius knew an officer who was prepared to act as patron to the boy – but Lallius simply went on a drinking bout for days before he was supposed to meet the man. Of course, he would have failed to pass the physical examination and that would have disgraced the family even more. Numidius had to put it off – he was angrier than ever about that.’
‘The idea of gaining money of his own did not attract Lallius, then?’
‘Apparently he was furious about the whole idea, raging that he’d never had to lift a finger in his life, except to summon a slave to bring more wine, and that route marches in full kit would kill him in a week. He had the whole household completely terrified – they all say he is very nasty when he’s drunk.’
‘This friend is a bad influence, perhaps?’ I said.
‘Quite the opposite!’ my wife exclaimed. ‘It seems that Lallius was the leader in all their exploits from the start. They went to school together at the paedagogus in the town and Lallius was always getting his comrade into scrapes. Lallius was unpleasant even as a child – he modelled himself on the young Caligula. He was almost banished from the house when he was six years old, for deliberately setting fire to a dog. The sort of boy who pulls the legs off flies, and pulls fish from the water just to see them squirm. And he frightened this Cassius into following his lead. Anyway, even that friendship didn’t last, it seems. Cassius is the person who had Lallius brought to court – there was a fight about a gambling debt they owed, and Lallius took his money and knocked him down, he said.’
A Roman Ransom Page 24
