A Whispering of Spies

by Rosemary Rowe

  Junio frowned. ‘So what do you suppose? That this host saw the treasure on the cart and the temptation was too much for him?’

  ‘Or someone else had followed them and killed them while they slept?’ I countered, though I didn’t really believe it as I spoke.

  ‘Then chopped up the bodies, dragged them out and tried to make it look like rebel handiwork? And slaughtered the horses for good measure afterwards? It does not seem a very likely tale to me.’

  I shook my head. ‘All the same, I am convinced there is a link. There is only one way to find out. You and I have to get out to that farm tonight. And perhaps we could look in at the jail as well, and have another try at seeing Calvinus.’

  ‘Tonight!’ Junio couldn’t have looked more startled if I’d stabbed him through the hand. ‘But you must surely see that that’s impossible! They won’t let us near the jail. It’s much too far to walk out to the farm, and anyway it’s dark and you aren’t even certain where you’re going.’ He picked up the jug and drank the dregs from it, as though he needed alcohol to steady him. ‘Besides, you’re tired. You’ve had a busy day. And surely now Alcanta’s here it alters everything?’

  ‘Alcanta?’ I murmured. Surely I had heard that name somewhere recently. Then I remembered. ‘Great Mars! You don’t mean Voluus’s wife? She is here already? Has the lictor come as well?’

  His expression was one of disbelief. ‘So you didn’t get my message? I thought that’s why you’d come.’

  ‘Message?’ It was my turn to frown.

  ‘I sent Brianus with it, to your patron’s flat. Didn’t you receive it?’

  I shook my head. ‘How long ago was that?’ I was having mental visions of Marcus’s servants coming to my room and finding I was missing, long before I’d hoped. If they had already called the watch and set a search for me, this evening’s enterprise was going to be even more difficult than I had supposed.

  Junio’s answer allayed that fear, at least. ‘Not long after I left you at the fort. When I got back here he was waiting at the shop, almost paralytic with anxiety. He’d gone back to his apartment and found it full of slaves – the ones that Alcanta had brought with her from Gaul.’

  I was puzzled. ‘I thought he’d run away?’

  ‘He had, but the temple priests persuaded him that it was safer for him to go back home, saying that – since Calvinus was in prison and Voluus wasn’t here – it was unlikely that he and Pronta had even yet been missed. However angry Voluus might be when he discovers that his treasure’s gone, it couldn’t be as dreadful as the penalty for a captured fugitive.’

  ‘That was sensible,’ I echoed. ‘Did the boy take Pronta back with him as well?’

  Junio shook his head. ‘He could not find her, so he went alone, thinking that she might have done the same. But when he got there he found these other slaves. They had no idea who he was, which was fortunate. When he said that he belonged to Voluus, they thought he was some sort of messenger, so they gave him directions to where his mistress was. He might have gone there, too, except that he enquired for Pronta, and was told that she was listed as an official runaway, the watch had already been told to hunt for her, the guards had been given her description at the gates and she would be shown no mercy if she was ever found.’

  ‘That must have upset Brianus,’ I observed. It meant that the lictor would have her put to death. ‘The boy was fond of her.’

  ‘What upset him even more was realizing that the same applied to him,’ Junio said with vigour. ‘He had half-intended to go to his mistress and confess: say that he’d been absent from his post and take the punishment – he expected a beating or no rations for a day – but once he understood what was in store for him, he changed his mind again. He was lucky there. They still thought he was a messenger from Voluus – he hadn’t told them otherwise – so they just let him go.’

  ‘Go to his mistress? So she wasn’t at the flat?’

  Junio shook his head. ‘Apparently she arrived in Glevum late this afternoon. The ship that brought her here had favourable winds and made much better speed than anybody thought. She sent a message to the apartment, naturally, to say that she was on her way – but there was no one there, of course, and nothing was prepared. She hadn’t even heard about the treasure-cart. There’s been a dreadful fuss. Somebody at the building was keeping watch on Voluus’s behalf and sent the news of all the day’s events back to her with the messenger – including the information that Calvinus was in jail.’

  ‘That watcher was one of Porteus’s spies, no doubt,’ I said. I was beginning to see what this was leading to. ‘And I suppose he also managed to report that the lictor’s other two slaves were on the run?’

  ‘Exactly. Poor Alcanta! What a welcome to receive. You can imagine what a dreadful shock it was for her – and with an infant, too. If one of the councillors had not stepped in and offered her his hospitality for a day or two, she might have had a dreadful time of it.’

  That councillor was presumably Porteus again, and he would doubtless want paying for his solicitude, but I did not linger over that. I had a pressing question. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Brianus told me. When he discovered that he was a wanted runaway, he ran away again, more terrified than ever, as you might suppose. He came to beg for help – he had nowhere else to turn, he said, and you had been kind to him.’

  That would teach me to give oatcake crumbs to slaves! ‘So where is he now?’

  Junio looked stricken. ‘Father, don’t you see? That’s just what I don’t know. I sent him to tell you all this news, but you say he didn’t come.’

  I thought a moment. ‘If there was a search for him, I expect the watch have picked him up and put him with the steward in the jail. In that case you’ll be lucky to escape the courts yourself. You know the penalty for helping or harbouring a runaway.’

  ‘As I pointed out to Brianus himself, it is no crime to assist a fugitive if you can prove to the satisfaction of a magistrate that his master was unnaturally cruel and that he has only come to you for sanctuary – Brianus’s weals and bruises might convince a court. Anyway, if not, what difference can it make? We are likely to be in exile tomorrow anyway.’

  I frowned at him. ‘You? I am, certainly, but you are not. Though you could always blame me for his coming here, I suppose.’

  Junio made a face. ‘Do you suppose that I would let you face the hardship of exile all alone? Of course I shall come with you.’

  This was so unexpected that a lump came to my throat, but I managed to say gruffly, ‘Of course you will do nothing of the kind. What about the women? And your infant son?’

  ‘We would have to leave our wives and send for them later, if things go well enough. If not, they could scrape a living where they are. They have sufficient crops and animals to live, and I don’t imagine Marcus will permit them to starve if times are hard – even if he has to take them back to servitude.’

  Both our wives had been slave-girls in their time, and it was not something that I would ever wish on them again, but Junio was right. A life in Marcus’s household, even as a slave, would not be half as harsh as a life in exile, or struggling alone against the winter elements to eke a meagre living from the small-holding. As the old adage has it, ‘better serve than starve’.

  All the same I shook my head. ‘I could not permit it. Anyway, it might not come to that. Help me find out what I need to know, and maybe I’ll be able to prove my innocence.’

  ‘Help you by encouraging this mad enterprise of visiting the farmstead in the middle of the night? It would take you hours to walk all the way out there – even longer, since you’ll have to walk for miles around the outside of the town-walls before you start. The gates are shut and guarded at this time of night.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to get the sentries to open them,’ I said. ‘And some form of transport to get us to the farm. So listen carefully, I’ve got a sort of plan . . .’

  TWENTY-THREE

  A few mo
ments later we were damping down the fire, blowing out the tapers and locking up the shop. Junio had managed to contrive a torch by dipping a bunch of dried rushes in some oil, and – having lit it in the embers – he was now holding it aloft as we made our way back to the gates. It was a great deal easier with a light.

  But instead of turning in towards the town, I led the way out to the monuments, where the funeral was just coming to a close. The funeral offerings and perfumes had been added to the pyre (as it was easy to discover from the smell) and it was burning down. The presiding priest – a doddering old man – was in the act of pouring wine on to the fire to douse the flames, and the funeral women stood by with their urn, ready to put symbolic ashes into it – the rest would be dealt with when the pyre was cold. Two or three people turned to look at us, but evidently decided that we’d merely moved to get a better view: there was already a considerable crowd, many with torches very like our own, and a couple of extra hooded mourners created no remark.

  There was an awkward moment when the aged priest scattered a handful of earth upon the pyre and invited the funeral guests to come up one by one and make their farewells to the departing soul. Something was obviously expected of us all and I did not even know the corpse’s name. When it was my turn I walked up to the fire and murmured something pious-sounding underneath my breath. In fact, my address to the departed was composed of a short list of the different kinds of stones we used in the workshop, which was all my scrambled brains could think of at the time. But I got away with it. Nobody was listening, apart from Junio, who came behind me and did something similar.

  Then it was time for the funeral visitors to depart, leaving the relatives and priest to finish at the pyre and select a bone for symbolic burial. (In old-fashioned Roman families, even nowadays, one tiny fragment of a cremated corpse is ritually interred, in ground specially purified by the offering of a pig.)

  None of this required the rest of us, so a torch-lit procession soon formed behind the flute and we wound our way back to the gates again. The sentry did not even blink as he stood back to let us through.

  As the portals closed behind us, Junio turned to me. ‘Well, we’ve got into Glevum – what do we do now?’ he murmured under cover of the crowd.

  ‘Follow the flautist to the centre of the town, then we’ll lose the other mourners and decide what we do next.’

  Losing the other mourners was not difficult: they were all returning to their homes, as fast as possible, anxious to perform ablutions to wash bad luck away, so by ducking down an alley we soon found ourselves alone, though several of them actually called a warm ‘goodnight’ to us.

  The warmth of that farewell was the only warmth there was: the alleyway was damp and dark and smelt of midden-heaps, but the manure-collector I had noticed coming into town had clearly done his work this evening and the worst was gone, so it was possible to walk along the passageway with care – especially since we had the luxury of light. Junio was fretting about his sandal-soles but I was anxious to keep out of the major throughfares, because by now we were close to the forum and the wine-shop block again.

  It was still necessary for us to cross that very street, of course, but when we came to it there was not a soul in sight. The windows in my patron’s flat had all the shutters closed and even the staircase entry was shadowy and dark: there was no sign of the disturbance I had feared, and even less of any kind of search. I began to breathe more easily.

  ‘Well?’ Junio demanded. ‘Shall I lead you to the jail, so you can try to talk to Calvinus, or do you want to go directly to this farm?’

  I made a calculation, looking at the sky. All the light had faded from the west and the first stars were twinkling in the gaps between the cloud. ‘It is getting very late. If we propose to go out through the southern gate, we had better do it straight away.’

  He glanced at me, the torchlight dancing in his eyes. ‘You don’t expect to play the funeral trick again? I know the carpenters have got a pyre, but no one will believe you’re attending it so late.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve got another plan – it all depends who is on duty at the gate.’ I grinned at him. ‘And since it seems that no one’s on the hunt for me, we can use the pavements and the wider streets from here. No more horrid alleyways like this.’ I gestured to the one from which we’d just emerged.

  As I did so I felt my mouth go dry. Someone had seized the corner of my cloak and was tugging me back into the narrow space again. ‘Citizen Libertus?’ a whispering voice accused.

  I whirled around, shouting to Junio to flee. He, of course, was carrying the torch and I squinted in the dark trying to make out who my captor was. It was not a large person – I could see as much that – but the grip was determined and my best efforts could not pull my clothing free. ‘Is that the page-boy?’ I muttered, angry with myself. I’d been a fool to think that I could get away so easily, and I’d been careless, too, ceasing to take enough precautions to defend myself.

  ‘Come into the alley; I want to talk to you. It’s very important.’

  I recognized the voice. ‘Brianus!’ I was whispering, too – not so much for fear I might be overheard as because I was breathless with relief. I gestured to Junio, who had crossed the road and was standing watching me – defying my instruction that he should run away – and he came back to us.

  Brianus was crouching in the corner of a doorway and even when we stepped into the alley where he was, he was most unwilling to let go of me. He was also clearly terrified of the illumination from the torch and he was not happy until Junio took it further off. By that time, though, I had caught a glimpse of him – thin, strained and dishevelled, his pale face streaked with tears. He wore the cape and tunic that I’d seen him in before, but this time his garments positively stank.

  ‘You had a message for me?’ I began. ‘Quite an urgent one. But it didn’t reach me. What prevented you?’

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ the boy said tearfully. He did not release my cloak. ‘I did try to bring it. I got right to the corner of the baths – but I didn’t realize that the place that I was looking for was so near to where my master has his flat.’

  Of course! I hadn’t really worked that out myself. I had known that the two were fairly close, but the implication for Brianus had not occurred to me. ‘So you were afraid that somebody from there would notice you? And hand you to the authorities, I suppose?’

  He gave me a grateful smile. ‘I knew you’d understand. And it wasn’t only that. I went another way and tried to get there down this alleyway, but just when I was about to cross the road, I saw a soldier at the wine-house door. An important one – you know, the kind that has the sideways crest.’

  ‘That would be the centurion who escorted me,’ I said.

  ‘He was not escorting you when I caught sight of him.’ Brianus was gaining in confidence again. ‘He was arresting someone who’d been lying on the floor. I knew that my mistress had proscribed me as a runaway, and all the soldiers would be looking out for me. So I stayed where I was – intending to bring the message when he’d gone away – but then the watch appeared and I actually heard them ask him if he’d seen a pair of missing slaves.’

  ‘And you thought . . . ?’

  He shook his head. He sounded desperate. ‘It wasn’t speculation, citizen. They gave a description and there could be no doubt – they were talking about Pronta and myself. A reward had been offered, by the order of some city councillor, to anyone who captured us and brought us back. Dead or alive, that’s what the watchman said.’

  ‘And what did the centurion have to say to that?’

  ‘He said he hadn’t but he’d keep a watch. So they went away and started asking everybody else – even a snooty private slave who was sauntering past the lane. They asked the people gathered round at the wine-shop door and all the people standing on the stairs. Well, of course I couldn’t go there after that. I did not know what to do – I had to find some kind of hiding place. In the end I found an empty
meat-stall just along from here, and I went in there and hid among the straw.’

  That explained the smell, I thought. ‘And then you heard me talking to my son and recognized the voice?’

  He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t as simple as all that. A little later on, I heard the watch again. They were searching the row of stalls that I was in, rattling the doors and poking with their swords. I thought my end had come. And then I heard the leader of the watch let out a shout. ‘There’s one of them, at least! And there’s a piece of luck. Someone’s saved us the trouble of dispatching her. Run and get a stretcher and we’ll take her home and claim for the reward.’

  I was staring at him. ‘Pronta!’

  He nodded bitterly.

  ‘Are you telling me she’s dead?’

  Another nod. ‘She had been strangled, by the look of it.’

  ‘You actually saw her?’

  ‘Well, of course I did. I couldn’t just go away and leave her there. When they went off to get their wretched stretcher, they only left one watchman keeping guard on her and he was patrolling the street where people walk, not keeping watch in the alleyway itself. I chose a moment when he’d marched the other way and stole in to take a look at her. They’d left a pitch-torch burning in a wall-bracket nearby, so it was possible to see. It was Pronta, though I hardly recognized her at first. You should have seen her face.’ His voice failed him as he blinked back his tears.

  There was nothing I could say to comfort him. I’ve seen the effects of strangling, and I knew what he meant. ‘So there was nothing you could do for her?’

  ‘I put three handfuls of dust on to the corpse – I remember that’s supposed to symbolize a burial if nothing better is available – so at least her spirit will have rest. But I could not linger. I was in danger as it was. The watch could return with their stretcher any time – so I went back to my stall. I reasoned they’d be busy with the stretcher, first of all, so while they were in there with it, I slipped out myself and I’ve been hiding in doorways ever since, wondering what on earth I was to do. I thought in the morning I might manage to get word to you somehow – and then to my amazement you went walking by.’