He paused as a crowd of people all in mourning clothes came streaming from the forum by every lane there was.
TWENTY
There were several members of the curia I recognised among the little crowd, including Alfredus Allius, the owner of the warehouse I’d just visited. He was walking with a youngish, pleasant-looking man I hadn’t seen before, both of them wearing dark-coloured mourning togas in honour of the dead, and accompanied (at a respectful distance) by their personal escort slaves. Alfredus raised a hand in greeting as we passed, and almost looked as if he meant to summon me, but – much as I would have liked to stop and catch my breath – I did not slacken pace to talk to anyone.
It was just as well, perhaps. We were near the forum, where the toga is obligatory dress for anyone entitled to be wearing it, and mine was threatening to unwind itself and festoon around my knees in a most unRoman fashion. It was also hampering my steps. If I had been somewhere private I would have stripped it off and carried it. It is not a garment suitable for anyone in haste.
‘They’ve come from … the reading of the will … of Gaius Publius,’ I told my son between panting gasps of air, clutching at my disintegrating folds.
He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘The one you were talking to the guard about? Then it doesn’t look as if your friend Commemoratus and his slave have managed to arrive in time to challenge it. From what you were saying to the guard back there, I fear they won’t be pleased. How did you come to know about that Imperial warrant, by the way?’
I shook my head at him. ‘Later!’ I wasn’t refusing to tell him anything, but that more was beyond my current powers of speech
Junio understood. ‘Of course. In the meantime, let’s cut down the side street of the silversmiths – and avoid these crowds. We’ll get back quicker that way,’ he said and led the way without waiting for a response.
The little street was narrow, but without the throng we made quick progress and very soon we were through the northern gate and out into the muddy streets of the busy suburb where the workshop was. As we approached it I tried to quicken my pace, but my poor old heart was pounding painfully – though whether mostly from exertion or anxiety it would be hard to say. Strangely, when we reached the door, I almost felt I didn’t want to go inside – but suddenly it opened and a skinny slave I’d never seen before came rushing out to us.
‘Oh, masters, come quickly – or you will be too late. My mistress has done her very best for him, but I think he’s near to death.’
Little Maximus! I could not believe that this was happening. My hesitation vanished and – despite my breathlessness – I rushed into the shop, skirted the counter and ran through into the inner partitioned space which was my working area. By the dim light of several tapers burning in a jar, and the flickering of the fire, I could discern the stout form of the tanner’s wife kneeling by the hearth. She was bending over a little crumpled form, which was lying motionless, with a piece of bloodstained linen wrapped about its head.
She raised her eyes and looked at me, but did not seek to rise. ‘Ah, Citizen Libertus, there you are at last. I’ve done everything I can to cleanse his wound and given him what comfort I could find, but – as you can see – only the gods can help him now.’
I nodded, too full of grief for speech. She had found the blanket-cloak and thrown it over him, but even in the dim light I could see that the boy’s face was ashen pale. His eyes were closed and when I bent to take his hand, it was as cold as death. I shuddered and put my fingers to his lips.
‘He’s breathing, just.’ The tanner’s wife got slowly to her feet. She was a sour-faced woman, whose tunic, hair and face had long since been dyed brown by tanning smoke. Our neighbourly relations had not been happy ones – she still held me responsible for the loss of an old slave – and she was famous for her irritable ways, but there was no trace of anything but gruff concern in her demeanour now. ‘Poor little fellow. Who did this, do you think?’
‘Did this?’ I found that I was staring at her in dismay. ‘I understood … it was an accident … he’d fallen from the attic … when the ladder slipped away from under him.’ Still gasping I turned to Junio who was standing at my back. ‘Is that not what you told me?’
He nodded. He was looking as startled as I felt. ‘It’s what I thought myself. What else could it have been? Maximus was in here on his own – though I did wonder why he’d gone up to the attic, suddenly. It is not a place we very often go.’
It wasn’t. Once upon a time that upper room had been my home, but a fire in the building had put a stop to that, and – though the roof was patched enough to keep the weather out – the area was only used for storage now, and only for things that weren’t in common use.
The woman’s face had taken on its more familiar scowl. ‘You say the ladder “slipped away from under him”. Who moved it, then? Did you?’
Junio shook his head. ‘Why should I move it? It wasn’t in the way. Obviously I saw that it had fallen, but I didn’t pick it up. I was too worried about Maximus. I left it where it was.’
She looked at me with a sort of gloomy triumph. ‘Well, citizen pavement-maker. You’re the clever one. You look at that ladder, and tell me what you think.’ She gestured to where it was lying, just on the other side of the piles of sorted tesserae, which were waiting to be placed into the piece of pavement pattern we were working on.
A little more recovered from my exertions now, I took up the taper, picked my way around the workpiece and stones and went across to what had previously served us as the attic stairs. It is a simple ladder of the usual basic kind – a central strut with pieces fixed across at intervals to give a step at either side – and at first sight I could find no fault with it, though the footholds at one end were badly scuffed as if they had made violent contact with something as they fell. I looked up at the aperture into the attic room, and down again, and saw what she had meant.
‘Dear gods,’ I murmured. ‘It can’t have fallen there.’ I turned to Junio. ‘Where was he lying when you found him first?’
‘About where you are standing. You can see the blood – near the mark on the floor where the ladder used to stand,’ he said. ‘Dear Juno, should I not have moved him? Have I made it worse? I thought to put him closer to the fire.’
‘Nothing could have made this worse,’ I said, ‘But the tanner’s wife is right. It was no accident. Look where the ladder’s lying, then look at the little groove it made when it was properly in place. If the bottom had simply slipped away from him and landed over there, it would have run into that heap of tiles and you would see the track it made as it pushed them aside. But there’s no sign of anything like that. They’ve not been disturbed at all.’ My voice was trembling. I have seldom felt so helpless and angry in my life.
‘I’m sorry, Father. I should have seen that for myself.’ Junio was genuinely contrite and upset. I’ve long encouraged him to use his eyes and head and try to make logical deductions from the evidence and he prides himself on his abilities. ‘I was too concerned about his injuries to think of it, I suppose.’
I gave him a sympathetic look. ‘I am not surprised. I would have been myself. But you can see it now? And look at those scuff marks on the upper rungs – they’ve banged against the opening several times. You can see the marks around the aperture. It seems that someone either picked the ladder up and deliberately shook it till he fell, or – more likely I suspect – clubbed the boy so violently that he collapsed half dead, and then yanked the ladder loose and arranged the scene to make it look as if there’d been an accident. The intruder probably supposed he’d murdered him.’
Junio was staring at me in dismay. ‘But who would want to murder Maximus? He was just a slave. He hardly knew anyone outside the family. Except that he once worked for Marcus, I suppose.’ He looked at me sharply. ‘Dear gods! The orchard! You don’t suppose …?’
I knew what he was thinking, and I interrupted him. The tanner’s wife had a careless tongue and an appetit
e for gossip which was famous in the street. ‘There must be a connection,’ I said bitterly. ‘But for the moment I can’t see what it is. Maximus was not at the villa yesterday.’ I meant, of course, that he was not a witness to what happened there, and so a potential danger to the conspirators, as my patron’s household servants would have been – though I avoided saying this. Even at a dreadful time like this, it was important that my patron’s business was not bruited round the town.
I watched my son’s face as he worked out for himself the implications of my words. ‘You don’t think that they mistook him for Tenuis, somehow?’
‘I suppose that’s possible,’ I said. ‘It had not occurred to me. Though they obviously didn’t know that Tenuis had seen them yesterday, or they certainly would not have let him go. Anyway, what on earth would make them look for Tenuis here? No one knew that he was coming …’ I broke off, suddenly. ‘Except for Georgicus!’
‘Is that the fellow who came calling here today?’ I had half forgotten that the tanners’ slaves were there, but the one who’d met me at the door was clutching at my sleeve. ‘We could describe him, if you need a witness, citizen. Couldn’t we, Festus?’
His companion, who was standing with his mistress by the hearth, shook his small head energetically. ‘I didn’t see anything. I had work to do.’
I recognised the terror in his voice. It reminded me of Tenuis when we first questioned him. This Festus was unwilling to say anything at all.
The other slave, however, seemed oblivious. ‘Of course you did. You must have done. We saw him from the yard – some sort of patrician, with a stripe as wide as this.’ He indicated the imaginary width by holding up a finger and thumb and spreading them apart.
‘If you mean the patrician who came here asking about mosaics before noon, I spoke to him myself,’ Junio said, soothingly. ‘Came this morning in a carrying-litter, didn’t he?’
The slave-boy shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean this morning, citizen. I think it was past noon. We’d been working inside the tannery since dawn, scraping an ox hide that had finished in the soak – it’s a lengthy business and it must have taken hours, but we did it in the end. When it was done the master sent us out to hang it on the outside rack and that’s when I glimpsed your visitor.’
‘You can’t be sure what time it was!’ The other slave was looking mutinous. ‘We didn’t hear the midday trumpet sound today. It could easily have been this man who wanted pavements done.’
‘But I didn’t see a carrying-chair. He seemed to be on foot – that’s why I thought it was peculiar. And there’s another thing. He had a slave-guard with him – an enormous man. He was taller than a tree and his face was the colour of the mixture that we brew to tan the skins.’
I stared at Junio. ‘Cacus!’ we said together, like the chorus in a play.
‘Now look what you’ve done. They’ve worked out who it is! Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?’ Festus said angrily, abandoning pretence. ‘If they call us as witnesses we’ll end up being questioned by the torturers. And if that big slave gets to hear of this, he’ll come back in the dark and finish what they started – so you’ll never speak again.’
‘You think the slave-guard did this to Maximus?’ I demanded.
My would-be informant was looking doubtful now. ‘I just saw him standing in the street. I don’t know if he came into the workshop, though I suppose his master did.’ He realised I was giving him a sad, reproachful look, and he hastened to excuse himself. ‘I thought nothing of it – it’s not unusual for a slave to wait outside, and I didn’t realise that you weren’t here yourselves. Anyhow, I couldn’t stand and watch, I had my tasks to do. Just as I have now. I’m sorry, citizen, I’ve told you everything I can.’ He hurried over to join his mistress and Festus at the fire and turned his back on us. It was obvious that we’d get nothing more from him.
‘So it looks as if it was the patrician himself who came in here and made this unprovoked attack on Maximus,’ Junio said soberly to me. ‘Though I can’t imagine why. It can’t be anything that Maximus had done. He’s always courteous. What makes a wealthy man like that attack a humble slave? Most people of that rank would hardly stoop to notice he was there. But it looks as though that is what happened all the same.’ He turned to me. ‘Was it Commemoratus, do you think – given the fact that Cacus was outside?’
I shook my head. ‘It isn’t possible. Commemoratus was already at the dock when I first got there, and – according to Vesperion – had been there for some while, asking for Alfredus Allius and wasting everybody’s time by pretending to be interested in purchasing some wine. He could not possibly have come here, done this and got away, between your leaving here and my arrival at the docks. I was quite a short time at the garrison.’
‘So perhaps it wasn’t Cacus after all?’
‘There can’t be two of them!’ I was bewildered now. ‘But Cacus was running an urgent errand with that scroll – they wanted it registered before the will was read, though his master doesn’t usually move without him, it appears. He would not have had the time to come down here as well – in fact, he said as much. They were going to come and see me later on with a message for Marcus, if I hadn’t met them there. Yet I can’t believe it’s just coincidence. I wonder if the tanner’s slave has got his timing wrong. You’re sure Commemoratus is not the man who came here earlier?’
‘Absolutely certain.’ Junio was emphatic. ‘If he’s the man you pointed out to me with Cacus on the dock, that’s not the person who wanted pavements made. The two are not dissimilar in a lot of ways, I suppose, and certainly both wore a wide patrician dress, but your Commemoratus looks nothing like the man who came out here. He was much younger and had a different colouring.’
I glanced towards the fireside. The tanner’s wife was on her knees, still totally absorbed in tending Maximus – I doubt that she had heard a word of this exchange. Her slaves, however, were simply standing watching her. I beckoned them across.
‘One more question – answer it, and I won’t ask any more. If it helps me find the culprit, I’ll give you a reward. A half-sestertius.’
The boys exchanged a glance. It was the skinny one who answered. ‘What is it, citizen?’
‘Did you notice the colour of the patrician’s hair?’
This time the look that they exchanged was a bewildered one. Then Festus shrugged his shoulders. Obviously the promise of the bribe had done it’s work. ‘Just ordinary hair. The one thing that I noticed about the purple-striper that we saw was that his face was very pale, as if he never went outside into the sun and wind at all …’
I had just time to reluctantly conclude that this could not be florid Commemoratus after all, when we were interrupted by the tanner’s wife calling from the hearth. ‘Citizen Libertus, I think you’d better come.’
Great gods! I had been chattering all this time while Maximus was hurt! I scampered across the workshop as quickly as I could, scattering tesserae in all directions as I came. I think I was in time. I took my poor slave’s hand and held it in my own, and I still believe there was the faintest pressure from his fingertips and that a suspicion of a smile curved the bloodless little lips before the hand went slack and the face expressionless. I picked up the copper mirror which was on the floor nearby, where Junio had dropped it earlier. I held it despairingly before my slave-boy’s mouth, but – though I kept it there for minutes – no blessed mist appeared.
My beloved little red-haired Maximus was dead.
TWENTY-ONE
I staggered to the stone pile and sat down heavily. To any outsider my distress would no doubt seem ridiculous. My patron had been robbed of goods worth millions of denarii, his household slaves had all been killed, Pertinax was murdered and the Empire was in shock, but the loss of Maximus – a mere slave of the kind that you could pick up from any slave-market for not much more than the price of an amphora of good wine – hit me harder than any of the other horrors of the day. I closed my eyes and buried my head betwe
en my hands. I have no idea how long I stayed like that, but after what seemed an eternity I was conscious of a hand on my shoulder and a soft voice calling me.
‘Father?’ I looked up, wearily. Junio was beside me, carrying the remnants of the mead, re-warmed and steaming in a metal drinking cup. ‘Drink this.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t want anything.’ I tried to say the words, but my voice had failed.
‘Maximus mixed the spices in for you – almost the last task he performed on your account. So, don’t make his efforts appear to be in vain. Drink it – as he meant you to!’ My son spoke so severely that I did as I was told.
There was not a lot of mead but it was strangely comforting, though the act of drinking what my dead slave had so lovingly prepared almost made me weep. But my grief was mingled with an anger too – a bitter fury so intense it gave me strength. I would find the culprit and I would make him pay, even if I had to go beyond the law.
The law, I knew, was of little use to me. The killing of another person’s slave was an offence, of course, and if I could find the culprit and convince a court, I could demand the maximum legal penalty for such a crime: a compensation of three times his market price. No doubt there were excellent slave-boys available for less, but no amount could buy me another Maximus. I did not want a substitute – I wanted something much more like revenge.
But first, I had to find the murderer, and there seemed to be only one place to begin: Cacus, the giant with the muscles of a human Hercules, who could break me in two across his knee as easily as I could snap a twig. I looked around the inner workshop, ready to ask Festus and his friend to tell their tale again – no new questions, since I’d promised that, just a recapitulation of their first account, with the inducement of another half-sestertius if they did. But the room was empty except for Junio and me and that shrouded form which had once been Maximus, his injured head now tenderly covered by my cloak. Four lighted tapers burned around the corpse.
The Fateful Day Page 18
