‘What do you want done with the potential witnesses?’ The goatboy’s voice cut across my thoughts. He was trying to sound knowing and assured, but his voice betrayed him, breaking suddenly to a childish squeak. ‘You can see that they’ve been rounded up for you.’
‘You stopped them, single-handed?’ I enquired. He was so innocently presumptuous that it made me smile.
I should have suppressed it. The urchin responded with a cheeky grin. ‘Not on purpose, citizen – to start with anyway. It was the goats, you see. I tried to keep them in one place while I was keeping guard over the corpse, but they are wilful beasts. They got away and strayed into the middle of the road – which meant that when that cart came up, the driver had to slow. Then, of course, they smelt the turnips on the back – and there was no stopping them. They were round it in no time, trying to push their noses in, and forced the cart to stop. The driver got down cursing and wanting to know what was going on here, by all the gods?’ His imitation of an outraged farmer was a lively one.
‘So you explained?’ It was a vain attempt on my part to reassert control. I was at a disadvantage, conducting this interrogation from the gig, so looked round for a method of getting safely down. I could see nothing that would serve me as a step, so I glanced back at the escort – hoping for an arm – and was suddenly aware that I’d created an uneasy stir. The soldiers, in almost perfect unison, were looking from me to the goatherd and then back again, and then at one another – as though performing some unlikely drill. They were obviously unable to understand a word and were very suspicious of what was being said.
Scarface, I realised, had been the cause of this. He’d climbed down from the ox-cart at the rear, and come forward to listen to the interview. From his demeanour it was clear that he’d made up his mind that I was speaking Celtic to exclude the troops: at best disguising what the conversation was about, if not actively plotting with a rebel spy. I sighed and abandoned the idea of getting down – he would construe that as consorting with the witness, I could see.
The lad, however, was quite oblivious. ‘I did more than tell him, citizen,’ he said, answering my previous enquiry. ‘I brought him over and showed him what I’d found. It shocked him terribly.’
‘And he did not just drive on – and scatter all your goats?’ I braved the disapproving scrutiny of Scarface and his friends and went on as before. It was my best chance of getting information from the boy. ‘It must have struck him that – if there were rebels in the area – he and his family might be ambushed too.’
‘Perhaps it did.’ The urchin grinned up at me. ‘But it occurred to me that the army would want to question him – he’d been driving on the piece of road the rebels may have used – and there might be something in it for me, if I kept him here. So I threatened that I’d report them if they tried to leave. The whole family had got down from the cart by that time anyway – trying to shoo away the goats from eating all their stock – and at that moment the pitch-sellers arrived. The farmer wasn’t letting them go, when he had to stay himself – they were as much witnesses as he was, he declared – and after that it simply seemed to grow. When the others came this way they assumed they had to stop.’ His voice gave way again and dropped dramatically. ‘So I’ve done your job and rounded up the witnesses for you – will there be any question of reward?’
I was tempted. A couple of quadrans would have been a fortune to this lad, and his cheerful innocence was irresistible, but I dared not give him money. Scarface would decide it was a bribe. So I shook my head and made a warning sideways gesture with my hands.
To my astonishment Victor took this as a signal that I wanted to dismount, and in an instant he had slid down to the ground and was offering me an arm to lean upon. I managed to do so with my dignity intact (not always easy in a toga in a breeze) and instantly my escort closed in either side – not so much to guard me, I was almost sure, as to limit what I did. I pretended to ignore them, and walked over to the ditch (entirely for show, there was clearly nothing further to be learned) and then turned solemnly to address the little group.
‘Well,’ I said – in Latin, ‘you can see what’s happened here. Obviously we’ll need to make a search – to see if the perpetrators are still hidden in the woods. Though from the way the blood has oozed into the ditch and drained away, I suspect this may have happened many hours ago.’
It was Hippophilus who spoke. ‘He’s quite right, gentlemen. I’ve seen this sort of thing on the battlefield before. That body has been here a little while.’
Even Scarface was looking half-convinced. I pressed my small advantage. ‘This boy—’ I indicated the urchin who was still standing by the gig – ‘says he has herded up the witnesses for us – rather better than he’s controlled his goats it seems.’ That earned a general laugh, though Scarface only scowled. However, my little jest had relaxed the atmosphere.
‘Over there!’ The boy had understood my words. He gestured with his staff towards the huddled group along the road, who were gazing back – as terrified of us as they were of rebel bands. With reason, possibly: the army is not known for being gentle with witnesses to crime, especially those who have nothing to report.
I raised my voice, and hoped that these ‘witnesses’ could hear me, though my voice boomed oddly in the mist. ‘I think they are simply people who were travelling on the road, but we’ll need to question them – just to make sure they saw nothing that would assist us in our search.’ I turned to the optio. ‘Hippophilus, take a couple of your men and go and ask those people who they are, and whether they have seen anything or anyone – suspicious or otherwise – on this road today. If so, make a note of it. If not, just get their names and where they can be found, then let them go – for now. No force, we want them to co-operate. And you, there, orderly—’ I turned to Scarface, now – ‘go with them. If any witness – like this boy – doesn’t speak much Latin, or speaks none at all, come and get me and I’ll talk to him myself.’
This justified my use of Celtic, naturally, and the soldiers nodded, though Scarface only scowled. Hippophilus just seemed glad to have a task to do. He detailed two soldiers to accompany him, and set off down the track. Scarface followed them reluctantly.
I turned back to the goatherd. ‘My colleagues will find out what those people know, if anything. But you have some explanations of your own to do. You were the first person to discover this. What were you doing here?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Moving on the goats.’
‘Moving them, from where?’
‘Where I had them rounded up last night.’ He gestured vaguely to the forest on the left. ‘I tie them up each evening, somewhere they can graze – though even then you have to used tarred rope to stop them eating it – and drive them on each dawn. I’m hoping to sell a lot of them in Glevum, by and by, and make a little money. Just keep enough to breed from in the spring.’
My knowledge of goats is limited, having only one myself, but I knew enough to ask. ‘You can’t feed them overwinter where you live?’
He shook his head. ‘We don’t live anywhere, in particular. My family used to have a farm once, long ago – but there were lots of sons who had to have their share and by the time my father got his inheritance, there was not enough to make a living on. So he took the goats instead – I wanted the horses, but he said that wouldn’t pay, they took too long to rear and were too hard to keep. We moved into the woods, but my father’s failing and my mother’s dead, so there’s only me to tend the animals. We live on milk – and now and then a goat – and anything that we can scavenge as we move from place to place.’
I sighed. Just what we needed – a juvenile itinerant who did not know the area. ‘So you have not been in the vicinity for long?’
‘Just long enough to build ourselves a shelter out of boughs. I’ve left my father there. I’ll come back and we’ll stay here for the winter now, I expect – once I’ve managed to sell the surplus off – because we’ve found a stream and there i
s plenty for the goats to eat nearby.’
‘Meanwhile blocking up the public road?’ I said.
He shot a look at me. ‘I generally try to keep them off the route itself, but with the recent rain, the stream has burst its banks, and the verge is very boggy in this dip.’ He gave that grin again. ‘You don’t know much about goats, citizen?’
‘I’ve never herded them,’ I told him loftily.
‘Well, you have to watch them when the going is slippery. While you’re struggling they get away from you and start to climb the trees, and then you’ll never get them rounded up again. The younger he-goats in particular. One charged off when I was talking to that courier today and the others followed him. If it wasn’t for the farmer’s turnips being such a lure, I think I would have lost them – which we could ill afford. I would have had to sell myself to slavery – that would raise enough to keep my father while he lives, and at least I wouldn’t starve. I’m good with horses, and quite good with goats.’
‘Never mind all that!’ I was sympathetic to his plight, but I had work to do. ‘The point is, you haven’t been along this stretch of road before? You don’t know if the corpse was there last night?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, citizen, but I can’t help you there. The first time I came here was shortly after dawn, and I only saw the body then because the goats went over there – I told you that they are inquisitive. But they won’t touch dead things, and they turned away. Though …’ He hesitated for a moment, then seemed to make his mind up suddenly. ‘I suppose that I had better show you. One of them was chewing this, until he spat it out.’ He unclenched the hand that was clinging to the staff and revealed a little silver clasp: a pretty thing although the hasp had broken off. ‘I don’t know where it came from. Not the corpse, I shouldn’t think. Goats will eat the toggles off your leather bag, if you’re not very careful, but they don’t like anything contaminated with blood. So it may be from his cloak as it was torn away. Or maybe one of the rebels dropped it as he fled.’
He handed it to me – with some reluctance, and I could see why. It was beautifully made, shaped like a little ram’s head with long curling horns, and would have brought a denarius or two at Glevum market, with no questions asked. I was surprised he’d been prepared to part with it – had he done so out of fear? Or merely in the hope of receiving some reward? Well this time, I could oblige him. I had reason now. I slipped my hand into my toga folds to find my purse and was in the act of giving him a few small coins, when Victor clutched my arm.
‘Could I see that for a moment, citizen?’ He had been holding the gig beside me all this time but he now handed the reins to the nearest soldier, and held out his palm. ‘That silver clasp, I mean.’
I was surprised but I dropped the little ram’s-head into it. He turned it over, stared at it a moment, then returned it with a nod. ‘I thought as much. I’ve seen this thing before. I think I know who it belongs to, citizen.’
TEN
‘You?’ I was astonished. What could Victor know about a silver clasp found on a public road some forty miles from where his master lived? Or, it occurred to me – since Marcus had purchased him quite recently – was this something that he’d seen elsewhere? That seemed too unlikely to be true.
But he seemed quite certain. ‘I’m sure of it. It is not an item you’d forget, and I saw it just a day or two ago, at your patron’s villa – my master’s country house, in fact. In the slave quarters. That curial messenger was wearing it, a blond good-looking chap – the one who had to be given accommodation overnight. It was his belt-clasp and he was very proud of it – he went on boasting so long that he kept us all awake and the chief slave had to tell him to desist. That’s why I’m so certain, citizen. It represents a sacrificial ram, apparently, and was a present from his master, a priest who gave it to him as a mark of high esteem.’
A priest. Of course! How could I be so dense? Silvanus the Priest – the Priest of Mercury in Glevum! Titus had spoken of him at the banquet, just the other night. I knew that I half-recognised the name. ‘The servant of Silvanus Publicus the councillor.’ As priest of one of the major gods, Silvanus would be an automatic member of the curia. (If I had been a duumvir, I thought, all this would doubtless have occurred to me at once.)
I was about to ask Victor if he knew more details, but he circumvented me. ‘Poor lad,’ he murmured sadly. ‘He isn’t boasting now.’ He peered into the ditch again, more hesitantly now. ‘That does look like his uniform, now I consider it – though it’s so torn and bloodied that it’s hard to tell, and all these curial uniforms are very much the same. And without the head …’ He made a little grimace. ‘It’s hard to judge the height. But I’m fairly sure it’s him.’ He gestured to the ditch. ‘The slave disc should tell you. It would even give his name. Something beginning with “V”. I think it was.’
I searched my memory. ‘Venibulus?’
He stared at me. ‘That was the name, that’s right. How did you know that? You didn’t meet him, as I recall.’
‘From the slave disc, exactly as you thought. The Imperial rider read it and the mansionarius told me, before we left.’ I had forgotten that Victor wasn’t present at the time.
The driver nodded. ‘In that case, it is certainly the man. Anyone might steal a belt clasp but that’s not a collar you could remove without the key—’ he bent over to peer more closely at the corpse, then swallowed hard and backed hastily away – ‘not even when you have taken off the head, apparently. It’s so tight that hasn’t fallen off.’
He was right in that, again. Some slave collars are simple chains, or even leather thongs, from which the slave disc is directly hung, but this was a high-status version, a handsome bronze band that locked behind the neck, with the disc suspended on a solid loop in front. Clearly a very expensive thing.
Victor was still looking mournfully at the murdered courier. ‘His poor master is going to be distraught,’ he said. ‘He’s already lost a number of his slaves. There was a fire at the house not many days ago – the boy was telling us. One of his own relatives was killed in it, he said. And several kitchen staff.’
So that confirmed that his owner was the Priest of Mercury! But I merely said, ‘To say nothing of three members of the curia!’ I don’t have the Roman attitude to patrician birth, and I’ve been in servitude myself, but even I can recognise that councillors are of more importance than their slaves – to the outside world at least.
Victor raised an eyebrow. ‘He didn’t mention that. He was more concerned to tell us how it affected him. Apparently, the usual curial courier was injured in the blaze – he’d been waiting for orders in the court, and his clothing caught on fire. So this Venibulus was asked to take his place. He was raised with horses and was very good with them – he’d carried private messages before.’
I nodded. Mercury is the patron god of messengers, so who better than his high priest’s courier to serve the council too? But that raised another question. ‘So he gained temporary promotion.’ (There’s more status in being a public messenger.) ‘But how did he obtain a curial uniform so soon? He’s clearly wearing one.’
‘I believe he borrowed it from the injured messenger. He was grumbling that it didn’t fit him very well and it would have to be altered if he continued in the post. Though, he didn’t like his new appointment very much. His previous life was fairly sheltered and messages were rare, and he was complaining of being expected now to ride out every day, at all hours and often for long distances as well. Dangerous he called it – and it seems that he was right …’ He broke off as Scarface came loping up to us.
He shuffled to attention, in deference to my toga, rather than to me. ‘The optio sends his greetings, citizen, but regrets that there is little to report. None of the witnesses saw anyone, except the couriers, and that’s no use to us. The peasant and the peddler both say that the Imperial rider passed them on the road – and the peasant thought he may have seen him riding up and down—’ he jerked a th
umb toward the victim in the ditch – ‘a little after dawn, but he could not swear to it. Says he was too busy loading up his cart to pay much attention. It does not add to what we know, in any case.’
‘And the pitch-sellers?’ I asked him, though without much hope.
‘They have even less to offer. They weren’t even on the road for the first hour of light. They stopped to sell and demonstrate their wares to a traveller who wanted to re-waterproof his coach, and after that they saw nobody at all – except a plump young fellow setting bird snares, but he was going the other way. In any case he was on foot and wearing country boots—’ he made a little gesture of distaste – ‘country boots’ are simply bits of uncured rawhide, bound around the feet – ‘so he could not possibly have run and got here ahead of th– Ahh! Get away, you stupid animal!’
One of the goats had come softly up behind him and was now balancing its hooves against his back and gnawing at the leather lappets on his uniform.
‘Get that creature off!’ He flapped ineffectually at it, but the animal merely moved its attentions to the tunica instead, until the goatboy noticed and came hurrying across to give it a firm thwack with his staff.
The creature looked mournfully at him with its strange black eyes, spat out the cloth that it was chewing on, and ambled off again. The goatboy followed him.
Scarface reached around and examined the back hem of his tunic. ‘Will you look what that animal has done! It has made a hole in the material. What will the quartermaster say?’ It was almost comic, but I did not smile because a thought occurred to me.
I called over to the goatboy, using Latin now. ‘Would that creature eat a sash or belt, do you suppose? A whole one?’
‘Depends what it was made of, citizen. A fabric one, quite possibly, and fairly quickly too. A leather one would take a little time.’
The Price of Freedom Page 9
