A Whispering of Spies

by Rosemary Rowe

  I looked around me at the carnage on the ground. There was something niggling in the corner of my mind – some detail that I could not quite identify – which made me feel this was not exactly what it seemed. Perhaps it was that feeling of disquiet which prompted me to ask, ‘What makes you so positive of that?’

  He looked at me, surprised. ‘Well, surely, citizen, it is obvious. This is no casual assault and robbery. It would take a band of well-armed people to overcome that guard – swords and axes by the look of it – and who but rebels carry weaponry like that? No law-abiding citizen could lay their hands on them – far less use them to such horrible effect.’

  I wished I were as certain as he was about that. It was true that civilians are forbidden to carry sharpened weapons in a public place – that law had been in force since the first nefas Ides of March. However, even the humblest landowner has hatchets and large knives on his estate, if only for chopping timber and butchering the stock – I even own such implements myself. But obviously I did not volunteer that fact. Instead I said inanely, ‘This was clearly not a law-abiding man. And almost everybody carries blades from time to time – if only knives when they are going to dine.’

  Emelius, who had his own dagger half-pointed at my ribs again, laughed scornfully. ‘It would take more than dining-knives to make a scene like this! And it was not one man – it was a band of them. What is more . . .’ He seemed to feel the commander’s icy glare. ‘With your permission, sir!’

  His superior nodded. ‘Go on, centurion.’

  ‘It must have been a well-commanded band and very used to stealth.’ He shot a look at me. ‘I’ve been in a few ambushes and I can tell you that. No one else could have crept up on this lot unobserved, not even in the night, let alone while they were wide awake and travelling along.’

  The commander glanced at me. ‘Go on,’ he said again.

  Emelius, encouraged, was happy to rush on. (The name means ‘eager’ and it clearly suited him.) ‘These guards would have been watching for attack – that’s what they were here for – and most of them were obviously armed. Some of those bodies still have cudgels hanging from their belts. Not even time to heft them, by the look of it.’

  ‘Well said, centurion!’ the commandant approved. ‘That seems to confirm my views beyond all doubt.’ He turned enquiringly to me. ‘I think we can report back to the curia that there was a rebel ambush on the cart, and the guards were taken by surprise and overwhelmed. Perhaps it’s not surprising that such a thing occurred – the news that there was treasure on the way was common gossip, I believe. It would not have been difficult for it to reach the bandits’ ears. This might have been avoided – with sufficient care.’

  It was very tempting simply to agree and thus deflect suspicion from Marcus and myself. After all, this was the conclusion that I’d been urging up till now. But I was still uneasy – though I could not say why. It was perverse, I knew, but some demon of honesty obliged me to reply, ‘Yet if this were the work of rebels, why not take the weapons, too? And why kill the horses, which could be of use to them – or at least sold for profit at the market-place?’

  I moved towards the nearest creature as I spoke – a stocky animal, clearly one of the horses which had pulled the cart. It had been cruelly disembowelled, the tail and head removed, and it had bled disgustingly. The commander seemed unwilling to approach, but the centurion followed me, still affecting to keep me under guard but at the same time taking a closer look himself. He was obviously emboldened by the commander’s earlier praise and was now anxious to offer his opinions about everything.

  ‘Perhaps the rebels didn’t have the time to deal with the horses when they took the treasure from the cart,’ he ventured. ‘They would have had to hide whatever they removed, and quickly, too, I suppose.’

  ‘Then why should raiders – who presumably are simply after gold – stop to chop the bodies up and scatter them about?’ I countered.

  The commander smiled at me indulgently. ‘Questions, always questions, citizen! But there is an answer this time. It has been known for rebels to mutilate a corpse – especially those of Roman soldiers, when they can – though the army does not advertise the fact. It happened to a couple from this very garrison not two years ago. It was just before I came, under the previous commander of the fort: the two men ran into a rebel ambush on the road and when the army found the hacked-about remains they couldn’t have identified the bodies of their own if they hadn’t known who they were looking for. But as for severed heads – that’s quite another thing. You don’t need me to tell you that – if there are Druids in the rebellious ranks – the victims’ heads are always seized, and taken as trophies to the sacred grove. Everyone knows that.’

  I nodded. I had seen such groves myself, hung with the grisly offerings of the severed heads of foes. I looked down at the mutilated animal again. ‘Heads, I will grant you. And perhaps the human mutilation is what you say it is – a gesture of defiance against the Empire. But why the animals?’

  He winced. ‘For the same reasons, wouldn’t you suppose?’

  I shook my head. ‘At such a risk? Take that horse for instance: it clearly died there, where it lies – you can still see the hoof prints in the mud, and the pool of blood and trampled grasses where it fell – but most of the hacking must have happened after death. All that dismemberment would have taken quite some time. Why jeopardize your getaway by stopping to do that? You would suppose – whoever did it – that having made the raid, they’d want to disappear as soon as possible. This, after all, is a major public road and it could not be long before somebody arrived.’

  The commander heard me out, then answered patiently, ‘Yet I could ask a dozen questions of my own which point the other way. If this was not the work of local brigands, why attack the cart-load here? Why not attack it nearer to the port or somewhere where there is no garrison nearby?’

  ‘Most of all, if this was personal revenge on Voluus, why not wait till he got to Glevum and murder him as well?’ That was Emelius, proudly laying his idea before his senior officer, as a cat will bring a mouse. ‘Once the lictor is established in the town, with only his own house-slaves for company, robbing and attacking him would be far easier. Imagine deliberately setting on a guard as strong as this!’

  I half-expected that he would be rebuked, but the commander smiled. ‘True again, centurion. Remind me to commend you for a bonus on the Nones.’

  He took a step or two towards the nearest human corpse, which was lying in the long grass among the trees, and I followed suit to get a better view. This one still had its face and arms attached though both the legs were gone. The owner had hardly been a handsome man in life, but he was young and virile and very muscular. He had clearly been a slave – there was a brand on the shoulder and a slave-disc round the neck – but bizarrely the dead face appeared to wear a smile.

  I stared down at the sorry spectacle. Hard to believe that only a day or so ago this fellow had been very much alive and in his prime. He had a dagger too, despite the law, still firmly in its sheath. By whom, and how, had he been set upon – so suddenly that he had not had time to draw the blade? It was just as the centurion had said: death seemed to have caught him entirely unaware.

  I shook my head. ‘I suppose that you and the centurion are right. This must have been an ambush by an overwhelming force which made no noise at all on its approach and which caught all the riders – in one stroke – entirely off guard.’ Even as I said it, it sounded improbable.

  I looked around again. The fatigue-party had found what seemed to be the driver’s arm, and were still foraging for the rest of him, retrieving bloody limbs to try against the stumps and, under Scowler’s supervision, making a collection of assorted legs and feet. Grisly, certainly, but disquieting as well? There was something – I knew that there was something – right in front of me. What was it that I should be noticing?

  There was one severed hand which lay not far away, and I went over to take a closer l
ook at that. I did not pick it up, but crouched down on the grass, consciously attending to every detail. The centurion followed me across and this time the commander accompanied me, too.

  ‘Found something of interest?’ he said to me at last.

  ‘I think perhaps I have. See it for yourself.’ I turned the object over gingerly. ‘There is a little staining from the mud but otherwise there are no marks on it. Look at it closely. What does it suggest to you?’

  ‘The ring has not been looted,’ the centurion said, pointing to a silver ring still on the finger. The promised bonus had redoubled his attempts to help. ‘Though perhaps that’s no surprise. Compared to other things, it was not valuable enough. Obviously they haven’t even tried to pull it off.’ He looked triumphant at his own cleverness.

  The commander nodded. ‘But look how relatively undamaged the hand is otherwise. I see what Libertus might be driving at. Even the fingernails are perfect and there’s nothing under them, so it seems that the victim didn’t even scratch or scrabble as he died.’

  ‘Exactly! There’s no sign that he tried to defend himself at all, even when the killer was right on top of him. No bruises, cuts or scratches on the flesh, except the one blow that lopped it from the arm – and the slight loss of blood that happened after death. Literally, it seems, he did not raise a hand to help himself.’ I got back to my feet, rubbing my hands together to brush off the mud and grass. ‘I wonder . . . ?’

  The commander was looking searchingly at me. ‘What is it you wonder?’

  It was just a hazy notion, but I voiced it all the same. ‘Possibly he thought his attacker was a friend? Maybe the whole escort thought something similar. Surely it must be something of the kind? How else would a band of people acting as a guard – and an armed guard at that – permit another group to come close enough to kill?’

  He looked a little brighter. ‘I suppose that’s possible.’

  ‘It would have to be a group that they were not surprised to see – a relief contingent, perhaps, which they’d been warned they might expect?’

  ‘Which would bring us back to some sort of conspiracy from here.’ The chiselled face relapsed into a frown. ‘Oh, dear Mercury, let’s hope that you are wrong and this is the work of simple rebels. It makes things so much easier to understand.’ He moved aside to let two of the soldiers pass, dragging a headless, legless corpse between them to the pile. ‘If you are right, this could be anyone. Anyone with a grudge against the lictor, anyway.’

  ‘The person who wrote to threaten him, in fact?’ I said, aware that I had previously argued just the opposite.

  The commander made a doubtful face. ‘In that case why not wait and kill Voluus himself? Everyone in Glevum knew he wasn’t on the cart.’ He caught my look and realized that he, too, was now refuting a position he’d once advanced himself. He turned away towards our carriage with an irritated shrug. ‘It does not make any sense to me at all.’

  Scowler was loitering a step or two away, and as soon as we moved off he gave a whistled signal to his men and one of the fatigue detachment immediately rushed in and carried off the severed hand that we’d been looking at.

  I watched him toss it nonchalantly on to the pile of other parts. One of his colleagues had retrieved the limb from up the tree by now, and that was being tried for size against the driver’s corpse – with some success, it seemed. The whole business was so casually brutal that it made the blood run cold.

  Was that the whole idea? I asked myself. I was beginning to rethink my attitude. Was this indeed the private vengeance threatened in advance? Or just the precursor? Was this conspicuous butchery designed to terrify – a kind of promise of what might happen next? That could explain why the bodies were so hacked about and left so conspicuously in a public place – because they were put there on purpose to be found! It would fit with a killer who sent a written threat.

  Perhaps, indeed, the whole design was not to kill the lictor at the first attempt, but to make him suffer as his victims must have done: force him to lie awake at night, sweating with cold fear, waiting for the moment when his turn would come to die – yet never quite knowing when that moment was to be. I could imagine how that would be a very sweet revenge.

  I turned to give the commander an outline of my thoughts, but he was already making his way towards the path again. He halted as I picked my way towards him, over the trampled bloodstained grasses (duly followed by my ever-present guard) then he gestured to the body pieces heaped up on the cart. ‘Do you want to look at any more of these? Or have we learned everything there is to learn from them?’

  ‘I ought to examine the driver, at any rate, I suppose.’

  He nodded. ‘Sesquipularius!’ Scowler bustled up. ‘Have one of your men unwrap this corpse again. This citizen and I would like to have a closer look at it.’

  Scowler saluted and roared orders at the unfortunate owner of the cloak, who hurried over to do as he was told. When he had finished, Scowler turned to us. ‘Ready for your inspection, gentlemen.’

  In fact, there was not a great deal to inspect. A bloodless torso in a tunic slashed to shreds, each slash the gruesome centre of a fringe of blood – just like the cloak that I’d seen earlier – except that here one could see the livid wound beneath each savage gash. I lifted back the tunic to take a closer look. No sign of earlier scars. Such internal blood as had remained to him had by this time pooled towards his back, making it dark and mottled like an ugly bruise: the tunic blood-smeared where he’d been propped against the driving-seat. I turned my eyes away – then turned them back again.

  That was it! The detail which had been escaping me! I said so to my companions. ‘Why isn’t there more blood?’

  Scowler was astonished into a retort. ‘Great Mars, citizen, have you not seen the cart? It’s covered with bloodstains, and the grass is, too. Amphoraeful of it. Even after all the rain we’ve had. How much do you expect?’

  I nodded slowly. ‘You’re quite right, of course. There is a huge amount of blood around. On this corpse, for instance. But it isn’t in the places where it ought to be. Look at these stab wounds – there is blood all right, but only on the very edges of the cut. If this man had been knifed while he was still alive, the whole of his tunic would be drenched with blood.’ I knelt and gently turned the garment back again. ‘You see the stains are darker on the outside of the cloth. It’s almost as if the killer dipped the knife in blood before they thrust it in – on purpose to make it look as if the man was stabbed to death.’

  ‘But, citizen,’ the centurion chimed in, ‘you cannot doubt that he was! There are knife marks everywhere.’

  I nodded. ‘And almost none of them have bled. At least, not very much. And that can only mean one thing. It is not only the hacking of the limbs that took place after death – most of this stabbing was done afterwards as well. In fact, I can’t find a single wound that bled as you’d expect. I think he was dead before the blows began.’

  Scowler was earning his nickname again. ‘But what about the cart? It’s covered in the stuff. Where did all that come from, if it didn’t come from him?’

  I heard myself speaking as if in a dream. ‘I wonder if that is why the animals were killed?’

  The commander was frowning down at me, perplexed. ‘What are you suggesting? That none of what we see is human blood at all?’

  ‘There is no way of telling!’ I rose stiffly to my feet. ‘I was the one who first supposed this was a rebel raid, but I’m beginning to wonder if Porteus is right. I’ve a terrible suspicion that this whole affair is staged – rather like a spectacle in the theatre. Oh, there were savage murders, there’s no doubt of that, and people have been hacked to pieces, as you see. But I’m not certain that it happened here at all.’

  TWELVE

  There was a moment’s silence. Everyone looked shocked. Then Scowler laughed, a little doubtfully. ‘Forgive me if I’m being impudent, citizen,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re reading too much into all this lack of blood
. Have you forgotten that it’s been pouring half the day? Look at the driver’s tunic – or the clothes on any of the corpses come to that – you can see that they are wet. Surely the stains you’re talking of aren’t there because they’ve simply washed away.’

  I shook my head decisively. ‘It would not account for why there’s more blood on the outside of the cloth. Quite the opposite! And if he had bled to death here – as it was made to seem – the pools beside the roadway would be streaked with blood, and you can see they’re not.’ The man looked so chastened that I softened my remark. ‘I know there’s been an awful lot of rain, but here we are in the shelter of the trees. If it’s not been wet enough to wash the bloodstains from the cart, how could it dispose of bloodstains on the inside of a cloth?’

  ‘Of course!’ The centurion chimed in – not so much in my support as to make some contribution, however limited. ‘So, sesquipularius, what do you say to that? Or do you believe that Jove has favoured us with some kind of miracle?’

  Scowler gave him a poisonous look but retreated, muttering.

  Meanwhile, the commander was examining the cart. He came back looking thoughtful. ‘I do believe the citizen is right. I don’t think the driver was murdered where he sat. Though whether he had simply got down from his perch to help the others when they were attacked, and was mutilated with them, perhaps we’ll never know. Certainly, like them, he has been dead some time.’

  I nodded. ‘Sometime late yesterday, I would estimate.’

  ‘I agree,’ Emelius put in, anxious as ever to be part of this. ‘The bodies have gone stiff – I remember that happening on the battlefield, when we did not have time to move the dead for several hours. They get quite hard to bury when they do not bend, and we sometimes left them for a day or so, till they went limp again; but not too long, or they start to putrify. These have not been dead long enough to smell.’ He looked around, as if alarmed by some unpleasant thought. ‘Let us hope that at least their spirits are peacefully at rest. This forest might be haunted for ever, otherwise.’