A Whispering of Spies

by Rosemary Rowe

  ‘A message from my master Florens and from his mightiness the councillor Porteus,’ he said, tendering it to the commander as he spoke.

  I knew the voice before I saw the face. ‘Servilis!’

  I was so surprised that I said the word aloud, sufficiently loudly for it to be heard. Everyone in the vicinity turned to stare at me. It was an appalling breach of etiquette, of course – interrupting a formal message in this way – and all the soldiers were aware of it. Emelius, who had followed me aboard, dug his elbow sharply in my ribs, while the commander paused in opening the seal and glared reprovingly.

  Servilis turned his head to stare at me, contriving to look both condescending and appalled. He said, with more than a touch of mockery, ‘Ah, citizen Libertus. I did not recognize you from the rear! However, I was told I’d find you here, though I’d understood that you were being kept in custody.’

  ‘And so he is,’ Emelius put in, leaning across me to brandish his dagger in the air.

  Servilis dismissed him with a glance. ‘Thank you, centurion. But I see the citizen has managed to persuade the garrison-commander of his so-called innocence, sufficiently to be given special privilege. However, Libertus, I fear I am the bringer of bad tidings, once again. My master managed to obtain the incriminating letter that you sent to Calvinus.’ He gestured to the scroll. ‘And he has had it copied for the commander here. He is keeping the original for evidence in court.’

  The commander was reading the document by now. It had clearly been written out by some professional scribe: the scroll was made of vellum and the script – even from this distance – was bold and beautiful. The effect was to give my words a gravitas they did not have when scratched with a stylus on an ancient piece of wax. The seal, which was an elaborate one, presumably belonging to the councillor, also conspired to make the letter look significant – quite different from the fraying ribbon with which I had secured my little writing-block. I tried to remember what I’d written in the note.

  I need not have bothered. The commander read it out. ‘“I have received your urgent message and will report developments to my patron as soon as possible. I have chosen not to send a verbal message with your slave, because I am not certain how much he should know, but I will call on you again tomorrow and let you know what Marcus says.”’ He cocked an eye at me. ‘You wrote this, citizen?’

  I nodded. I tried to explain the little ruse I’d used to question Brianus but the commander brushed my words aside.

  ‘It does not matter why you wrote it, the fact remains you did.’ His face was stony, though I swear there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. He turned to Servilis. ‘Ride back and tell your master that you have delivered this. Thank him for his trouble and assure him that I will study it more fully when I return to town.’

  Servilis shot me a triumphant glance. ‘You see the implications, commandant, of course. This letter proves his patron was involved as well. I am to remind you that you promised that – if there was evidence enough – Marcus Septimus should be brought in for questioning at once.’

  The commander nodded gravely. ‘I am aware of what I undertook to do, and I assure you that the matter is in hand. Please give my message to the councillor – though I fear I cannot write it down for you, especially in such an impressive form as this.’

  I felt myself breathe out, a long sigh of relief. The commandant was making it quite clear that he was not to be swayed merely by the magnificent appearance of the scroll. I could only hope that whoever was my judge proved to be equally unmoved.

  Servilis was not aware of any irony. ‘At your service, commandant,’ he replied, obsequiousness dripping from him like the raindrops from his cloak. He bowed over the commander’s proffered hand and got back to his feet. He turned to me, and made a mocking little bow. ‘So farewell, citizen! Until we meet again – as I am sure we shall.’

  I eyed him sourly as he went back to his horse. He vaulted on, with an unexpected ease which made me dislike him even more. Of course he was Florens’s senior messenger, and clearly very adept on a horse. He was conscious of it, too, swerving round and preening like the peacock Marcus had once brought – briefly – back from Rome, which had strutted round the villa like an avian Emperor, until it was unfortunately taken by a fox.

  I watched Servilis canter out of sight, wishing that something similar would befall him, too – a sort of vulpine nemesis – but nothing did, of course. He pressed the horse onwards and galloped out of sight.

  The commander spoke briskly to the escort, then turned towards the coach, but he was prevented from getting into it by the arrival of Scowler, who came hurrying up and sketched a quick salute.

  ‘In the name of His Imperial . . .’

  The commander sighed. ‘What it is, sesquipularius?’

  ‘With your indulgence, sir, we have completed the loading of the cart and buried all the horses – what we could of them – so we have finished here. Permission to join your escort-party back to town?’ He saw the expression which crossed his commander’s face. ‘Whoever killed this cohort must be somewhere quite nearby – at least supposing that the cart set off at dawn. We wouldn’t care to have them intercept us on the way. Seeing how they treat their captives, if you catch my meaning, sir.’ Another wheedling glance at the commander’s face. ‘Especially the hors . . .’

  I cut him off. ‘Of course!’ I said aloud. ‘If they did set off at dawn they must have spent the night not very far away. Voluus would not have them camping by the road with all his treasure on the cart. And even if this happened after dusk last night, it is still likely that they made a pause somewhere hereabouts, if only to refresh the horses and have a meal themselves. They would not use the mansio,’ I was reasoning to myself. ‘It was not a military convoy, and they wouldn’t have a sealed commendation from the governor of Gaul, the way the lictor did – so they would have had to use a common inn.’ I turned to the commander, who was still standing poised, with one hand on the vehicle. ‘Would it be possible for us to . . .’

  His turn to interrupt. ‘You wish me to neglect my duties to the garrison and take you to visit every private doss-house in the vicinity?’ he said. ‘Citizen, you cannot possibly expect me to agree. There must be a dozen villages within an hour’s ride.’

  But for a moment he had contemplated the idea! ‘I was thinking of the escort,’ I amended hastily. ‘They could travel fast. In fact, if two of them could go, they could do this twice as quickly as one man alone. Just swiftly check the local inns and then report to us.’ He was still looking thoughtful, so I cast a final die. ‘If there are costs involved, I’m sure my patron would be prepared to cover them.’ I hoped that I sounded properly convinced, though I could not, of course, be certain that Marcus would do anything of the kind.

  The commander shook his head. ‘And supposing they discover where the party spent the night? What do you expect the escort-men to do? Ride to Glevum to inform us? And what would that achieve? There would be a hundred questions you would want to ask, I’m sure, so you would be asking next to go and see the place. There is no time for that, the day is drawing on – night falls quite quickly at this time of year – and anyway, I could hardly let you leave the fort again.’

  ‘Then if Florens drags me before the court tomorrow, I shall simply have to hope I can persuade the magistrate to allow me extra time to find some witnesses.’ I sat back in my uncomfortable seat. ‘Someone must have seen the escort on the road, so at least we could discover whether it set out at dawn today – or whether it was genuinely travelling in the dark.’

  The commander gave me an exasperated glance. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said at last. ‘You give me little choice.’ He called the escort over. ‘Two of you ride on towards the south. Go as quickly as you can to all the inns along the road – let us say within five miles or so of here. I can’t agree to any more than that. Ask the owners if the lictor’s cart paused there, or stayed there overnight, or whether they even saw it pass, and if so, when that was
. Oh, and whether there were any other people passing through who might have seen it, too.’ He turned to me. ‘Is that right, citizen?’

  ‘More than I deserve,’ I mumbled gratefully.

  He turned back to the horsemen. ‘If you discover anything at all, ride back to us at once. Speed is everything.’ He climbed into the carriage lightly, as he had done before. ‘We will return to Glevum as fast as possible.’ He turned to Scowler, who was still fidgeting nearby. ‘Though the death-cart can come with us for mutual protection, as it were, and that is obviously not designed for speed. The sesquipularius, however, will travel in the back, to accompany the driver’s corpse and begin a proper lamentation as the ritual demands. If this was a member of our garrison it is the least that we can do.’

  Scowler looked rather less than pleased, but he had asked to join our party and he could not well object. He bowed his head and said, ‘The commander is most gracious.’

  His senior officer nodded and turned his attention to the escort once again. ‘As soon as the shadows start to lengthen and it lightens in the west, the outriders turn their horses and start back again, no matter where they are, even if there is another inn in sight. Is that understood? I don’t want anyone benighted on the road. Very well. Give orders to the drivers that we are ready to depart.’

  The leader of the escort wheeled his horse round to obey. He shouted to his riders and two of them set off, while the others formed up loosely around the coach. Our driver, looking sulky, climbed back on to his seat and a moment later we were lurching off, with the death-cart taking up position at the rear.

  FOURTEEN

  I glanced sideways at the commander as we jogged along. I was feeling rather uncomfortable by now – and not only because of the motion of the carriage. Though he had sent his riders out at my behest, I was not at all certain that much would be achieved.

  I squirmed a little on my seat. What I had really hoped, forlornly, was that I might be permitted to go with them myself. Sending mounted soldiers to ask questions in this way – even the questions that I wanted asked – was not likely to be much of a success. Many villagers and country folk round here still clung to Celtic ways – much more so than people in the towns – and were generally suspicious of Roman cavalry. I would have spoken to them in their native tongue, but I doubted that the horsemen would get much out of them, especially given the constraints of time and distance which had been placed on them.

  I could understand the commander’s reasoning, of course. He was thinking in military terms. A fully laden cart does not travel very quickly, at the best of times, and when the load is a really weighty one – like gold and marble statues, as this one had been – progress can be particularly slow. So as they would only have been travelling since dawn, five miles was probably a reasonable estimate.

  Equally, if the attack had happened before dusk yesterday (as I was still personally inclined to believe), it was logical to suppose that they were aiming to reach Glevum before dark – no one willingly frequents the road at night without a torch – in which case they would almost certainly have made a rest-stop in the latish afternoon, if only to water the horses and buy some food themselves. Again, five miles was a likely radius.

  But I had my doubts about the basis for that whole argument. I was still convinced that there had been two parts to this attack. If I was right in thinking that the treasure was removed along the way and the corpses loaded in its stead, the cart could have travelled a good deal faster and further than we were allowing for. Human bodies weigh a great deal less than gold.

  The commander had turned in time to see my frown. He raised his brows at me. ‘Something worries you?’

  I shook my head. There was no point in confiding my misgivings to him. It was too late now to bring the horsemen back and I’d already given him an outline of my views. I still found my own theory thoroughly bizarre. Even given that someone wanted to frighten Voluus, who would kill a half a dozen men and carry their corpses stacked up on a cart, simply to strew them in the woods and make it look as though the rebels had attacked? It seemed such an elaborately unlikely thing to do.

  ‘Libertus?’ the commander prompted, breaking through my thoughts. ‘I asked if something was concerning you?’

  ‘Everything about this worries me,’ I said, and made him smile. ‘I have a hundred questions. But there is one you might know the answer to. What will happen to Calvinus now – since it seems unlikely, after all, that he was involved in this?’

  The smile faded and he looked surprised. ‘What makes you come to that conclusion, citizen?’

  I stared at him. ‘But surely . . . ?’

  ‘Libertus, you are the one who convinced me that this whole affair was indeed a premeditated plot against the lictor, and not a simple accident of fate. That means that someone in his household must have been involved: somebody who knew about the cart, what it was carrying, when it would arrive and how big the mounted guard was going to be. Who else but the steward was in possession of those facts?’

  I was about to comment wryly that half of Glevum could have made a guess, but the commander did not pause to let me speak.

  ‘And you yourself suggested why the escort was off guard and how they could be so quickly overwhelmed: because they supposed their attackers to be friends or, at least, a prearranged relief. People, in any case, they were forewarned about and expected to encounter at that time and place. Who but a steward arranges things like that?’

  There – it was true – he had a valid point. ‘I can see the force of what you say,’ I answered carefully. ‘But I would swear that when I met him, Calvinus was shocked – and not a little frightened – by the news he’d just received. Wasn’t his first act to send to you for help?’

  ‘And isn’t that exactly what a guilty man would do, to divert suspicion from himself?’ the commander countered. ‘As for being tense and frightened – what else would you expect if a man had just connived the theft of half his master’s fortune and the murder of that same master’s – no doubt expensive – hired escorting slaves? It’s hardly evidence that the steward’s innocent.’

  ‘Or proof that he is not!’ I protested earnestly. I did not hold the steward in very much esteem – especially when I knew how he treated Brianus – but I could not let this accusation pass. The steward’s fate was now bound up with my own. ‘As for having information,’ I went on, ‘weren’t there others, too, who might have known about the cart? People with equal motive and more opportunity? Porteus himself, for instance. We know that he is desperate for gold. Or Florens, possibly? He has a personal guard at his command – huge, well-armed brutes with muscles – who could have carried out an ambush of that kind, and with relish, too.’ That was daring, given Florens’s rank, but I felt that I could speak with some conviction on that point.

  There was a silence broken only by the creaking of the carriage, the sound of the horses and the rumbling of the wheels and – very faintly – from somewhere in the rear, Scowler’s half-hearted ululation of lament. The commander made no answer, so I tried again.

  ‘Porteus, no doubt, has some sort of escort, too. And probably the writer of the threat to Voluus has something similar. Any band of heavy ruffians like that could have done what we have seen – especially if there was some question of reward.’

  The commander still said nothing. He would not meet my eyes. All the same I felt that he was paying me the compliment of thinking carefully about my arguments.

  ‘How could the steward muster such a force?’ I urged. ‘He could hardly have done this by himself. He would have had to hire people – and thereby run the risk that someone would betray him to the authorities, or to anyone prepared to pay them slightly more. Does that seem probable? And where would Calvinus get the money to do that anyway?’

  The commander leaned back on the seat. He ran his fingers through his hair again, creating another little waft of horseradish and spice, and then said – with finality, ‘I agree he was unlikely to be in
this alone. That was never what I intended to suggest. I think he just provided information to the lictor’s enemies – doubtless for a fee. No doubt he has dreams – like every slave – of buying himself free.’

  I nodded. ‘I believe he does.’

  He gave me that slow, laconic smile again. ‘Well, there you are! I tell you, citizen, in cases such as this, nine times out of ten the servants prove to be involved – especially if the master is a brutal one and does not command his household’s sympath . . .’ He broke off, leaned over and stared out at the road, from where a frantic clucking and squawking could be heard. ‘And what, in Vulcan’s name, is that cacophony?’

  I could have made an educated guess, even without the escort-rider who arrived, saying urgently, ‘I am very sorry, commandant, there is a short delay. My men are attempting to move the people on, but there’s a donkey-cart ahead which has just overturned and spilt its crates of chickens everywhere. It will take a few moments to clear a passage through.’

  The commander slapped his palm impatiently. ‘This is ridiculous.’ He had to raise his voice above the chickens’ outraged squawks in order to be heard. ‘. . . Obliged to wait in line with common poultrymen!’

  That was the least of it, of course – as he must have known. The roads were always crammed with wagons at this time of day: people wanted to reach Glevum before the gates were shut, but after the onset of official dusk – the time when civilian wheeled transport, forbidden during daylight hours, was permitted into town. We were sharing the roadway, not just with poultrymen, but with all kinds of cargoes from the neighbourhood: stones and barrels, wooden planks and nails, carpets, casks – anything too heavy to carry into town by hand. I even saw a ragged farmer on an empty cart – not bringing anything to town, but hoping, I surmised, to shovel up the stinking midden-heaps and carry them away for use as makeshift fertilizer on his fields. A strong smell wafting from the wagon-tray suggested that it had been used for this before.