A Coin for the Ferryman (12 page)

Minimus was already standing on the stool, slipping my clean tunic over my head and round my ears, so he sounded rather muffled as he replied. ‘We attended Marcus in the morning, didn’t we? Because Pulchrus had gone off to Londinium with the carts. And then there was that slave-trader who called in later on – the same one that Marcus always uses – bringing that useless, fair-headed little boy. Snowy, or whatever his name is.’ He smoothed the tunic round my neck and got down to tie the belt.

Maximus watched him critically, then gave the garment-hem a little tug so it hung evenly. ‘That’s right. I don’t know why the master ever bothered with the boy. We’d have done the job much better, if we’d had a chance. Not that I am sorry – I am happy to be here.’ He was waiting with my toga, and as he spoke he began to loop it deftly round me and fold it into place.

‘Why didn’t he ask you to attend him, then?’ I put in. Given the choice between Niveus and these two lively boys, I know which option I would have preferred.

Minimus pulled a face. ‘We aren’t sufficiently pretty for the purpose, I suppose. Marcus likes his pages to be glamorous. And didn’t Pulchrus know it? I often wondered if he chose his name himself.’

I nodded, with a grin. ‘Pulchrus’ means ‘the beautiful’. ‘I would not be surprised.’ I raised my arms to let the boys tuck in my toga-ends, which they did with practised skill.

Minimus gave me his cheerful, cheeky grin. ‘“Handsome as Adoneus”, Marcus used to say. You should have seen Pulchrus when he set off the other day . . .’

‘That new scarlet tunic . . .’

‘And that new fancy hat . . .’

‘Just to impress them in Londinium!’

‘More to impress Lucius, if you ask me,’ Minimus observed. ‘Marcus had the sewing girls make new tunics for all the household staff, before his cousin came. And a whole new wardrobe for himself and Julia . . .’

Maximus gave him a warning nudge. It was one thing to gossip about a page, quite another to discuss their former master in this way.

However, it was interesting to know. It explained my patron’s unusual generosity in providing Junio’s tunic and Cilla’s clothes tonight. As Gwellia had commented when we were in the town, Marcus was happy to be benevolent if the gift did not involve him in actual expense. Not that I was guilty of ingratitude. The tunics in question may have been passed on, but they were of a quality I could not afford and had been worn so little that they looked like new; while Junio’s toga must have been purpose-bought, since even Marcus’s discards bore that impressive purple stripe.

Cilla was chuckling. ‘Well, Pulchrus managed to impress them in Glevum anyway. I overheard one of the guards at the basilica today remarking that they saw him riding past the gate with Lucius’s hired driver and the wagon train. “Done up like a peacock, and twice as proud,” the fellow said.’ She did her imitation of the Rhineland voice. ‘“Too busy preening for the girls to even look at us.” Mind you, he was speaking to one of Lucius’s attendants at the time, and they are pretty vain themselves, it seems to me. Comes of being reared in the imperial city, I suppose.’

‘It’s the same up at the villa,’ Minimus agreed. ‘Won’t mix with any of the household staff – insist on having a special sleeping room. Especially that awful chief slave, Hirsius, with his swanky olive tunic and his sneering ways. Thank Mars he’s gone to Londinium with the luggage now. Pity that stupid bodyguard didn’t go as well. Great stuck-up bully – I don’t know why his master thinks so much of him . . .’ He trailed off and looked anxiously at me, obviously fearing that he’d spoken out of turn.

‘Well, he’ll have to be questioned, if I do the job myself,’ I said. ‘No one who attended Lucius and Marcus in the basilica today could have heard the story of the corpse until they got back home. It is possible that one of them has something he could tell.’

Gwellia had been listening to all this with interest. ‘I think it’s more than possible. They are strangers to the district – and it seems the dead man is too, since there’s no one missing in the area. Perhaps he was coming to visit one of them.’

It was a good point. I turned to the boys. ‘Which reminds me of my question a little earlier. Apart from the slave-trader who brought Niveus – whom Marcus asked to come – there were no unexpected strangers at the villa on that day? No peasant women, or young men who might have walked across the farm, and evaded the attentions of the gatekeeper, perhaps?’

I sat down to allow Minimus to strap my sandals on. ‘Nothing like that, master,’ Maximus replied, and Minimus looked up to shake his head as well.

‘Nobody came in, except the banquet guests. And none of them went missing, or we would have heard.’

‘And no one at all for Lucius. He had a messenger soon after he arrived, bringing him a letter from his wife in Rome, but apart from that there has been no one wanting him at all.’

‘What happened to that messenger?’ I said without much hope. ‘You saw him leave again? It isn’t possible that he might be the corpse?’

Minimus grinned and shook his head. ‘Certainly not the one you describe. He was a big, strong fellow – you definitely wouldn’t take him for a girl – and armed with the biggest dagger that you ever saw. I suppose he had to be. Riding for miles and miles like that on unfrequented roads.’

‘And he didn’t have soft hands as a local page might have – they were like shovels and blistered with the reins,’ Maximus added.

‘Anyway, it couldn’t possibly be him.’ Minimus, as usual, had the most to say. ‘You said the corpse is fresh, but he’s been gone for days.’

Gwellia signalled to Cilla to stop working on her hair. She was looking thoughtful. ‘That poor girl. I wonder who she was, in any case?’

Cilla put down the bone comb she was using. ‘The girl who was killed by the Silures, do you mean?’

Gwellia shook her head. ‘I mean the poor creature whose dress was on the corpse.’

The maidservant looked baffled. ‘The peasant girl? But there wasn’t one. The clothes were only there as a disguise. Probably purchased by the killer, purposely.’

‘But don’t you see?’ I jumped up to my feet, suddenly understanding what had been obvious. ‘Your mistress is quite right. That dress belonged to someone, and it’s likely she is dead. No peasant would have parted with that garment willingly. Not with all that money hidden in the hem.’

There was a silence, and then Gwellia said, ‘I wonder if we’re wrong in assuming that the woman was young? Now I come to think of it, from the amount of money that you found in her skirts it seems more likely that she was of middle age. It takes a long time to accrue a fortune of that kind.’

Even as she spoke, I saw the force of what she was saying. My wife can surprise me with her perceptiveness. ‘Unless she was particularly young and beautiful and had a rich admirer who paid for her services?’

She shook her head. ‘In which case you’d expect her to have demanded finer clothes, not a greasy garment with worn sleeves and fraying hems.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t think you know much about young women of that kind.’

I didn’t. However, I did not wish to have my ignorance discussed before the slaves. ‘You are quite right, wife,’ I went on hastily. ‘There is really no proof of the woman’s age at all. All we know is that she was of middle height and slim.’

Gwellia nodded. ‘You think she was well nurtured then?’ It was a valid point. Many women, especially on the land, were skinny to the point of boniness: in a poor harvest peasants always starved, and the women often seemed to suffer most – perhaps because they gave what little food there was to their children or their husbands first.

I nodded. I thought about the dress, remembering the stitching at the waist, which had shown signs of tightness and of wear, as if it had been straining at the seams. ‘I think she had enough to eat,’ I said. ‘Whatever age she turns out to have been, it was not starvation which caused her death, I think.’

‘But you agree we are looking for another body?’ my wife said thoughtfully.

‘It rather looks like it.’

She came across the room, magnificent in her
stola
, and raked her fingers gently through my still-damp hair. ‘My husband, I could wish that you weren’t caught up in this. It is one thing to be asking questions at present, when your patron’s here – quite another when he’s gone to Rome. Who will there be to protect you then, if anything goes wrong?’

I shrugged, unwilling to admit that I had the same fears myself. ‘Then, wife, I shall have to make sure that nothing goes amiss. In any case, my patron wants this solved before they go away – before the Lemuria begins, in fact.’ Actually it was Julia who had said that to me, but it came to the same thing.

Gwellia was still looking doubtful. ‘That only makes it worse. You won’t have time to take things carefully. And from your description of what happened to the corpse, this killer will do anything to disguise his tracks. He must be merciless.’

I took her by the shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Gwellia. But if my patrons ask me, what else can I do?’

She shook herself away. ‘I know you’re right, of course. But I have a premonition. I don’t like this at all.’

‘You are just like Julia’s mother-in-law, in Rome.’ I tried to lighten the moment with a jest. ‘She’s famous for her premonitions.’ I told her about what Lucius had said.

She gave a rueful smile. ‘I’m not surprised that Julia doesn’t want to go to Rome, if Marcus’s family is all like Lucius. He looked so supercilious in the court today, I was relieved that Junio’s manumission went off without a hitch – I would not have put it past the man to decide the business was beneath him and spoil it in some way. Though perhaps I misjudge him. We have never really met.’

‘Well, it is time to go and meet him now,’ I said. ‘It will soon be getting dark, and they will be expecting us at the villa for the feast. It will take some time to get there – especially in new shoes. I can’t walk quickly in a toga at the best of times.’

Maximus and Minimus were by my side at once. ‘With your permission, master . . .’

‘. . . our former mistress, Julia, instructed us that when you were ready to come . . .’

‘. . . we were to run down to the villa and request the cart for you.’

‘Did she?’ I was very much surprised. ‘Marcus has never sent a cart for me before, unless I was ill, at any rate.’

Minimus gave that toothy grin of his. ‘She told him it would not impress his cousin if you came with dusty hems.’

I laughed aloud. ‘Very well then, go and fetch the cart.’

And half an hour later the three of us were on our way – not in a cart but in Marcus’s own gig, with Maximus and Minimus trotting at our side. We rode like patricians to the villa gates, where Aulus was waiting to scowl at me again and Niveus came out to show us shyly in.

My patron was given to extravagant feasts but that evening’s banquet was the most elaborate I have ever seen. So for Gwellia, who had only rarely attended formal meals – let alone for Junio who had never dined in Roman style before – it must have been an amazing experience from the very start. Of course, we knew that all this conspicuous expense was entirely in Lucius’s honour – Marcus was clearly determined to impress his visitor and would not have bothered with such luxuries for us – but we were the incidental beneficiaries all the same.

There were scented bowls of water in which to bathe our feet (though we had washed them just before we came) and there were slaves to kneel and do it and pat us dry again with spotless linen cloths. Then came more slaves with floral wreaths, napkins, and knives for us all – as though a man never carried his own cutlery to feasts.

Lucius, as the principal guest, reclined on Marcus’s right while Julia occupied the position on his left, where – as the second-ranking guest – I’d half expected to be placed myself. Another couch and table had been arranged for us nearby, at right angles to the first, where I was similarly flanked by my wife and my new son, so that Junio – although a male – was in the most inferior place and the two women were close enough to talk. Apart from the dining couches, an empty stool stood by – obviously for Cilla when the moment came.

I suspected that Julia had had a hand in these seating arrangements, which were unusual – since women did not usually sit at the top table in this way – but actually very cleverly designed. Making me the centre of a table of my own was a kind of compliment and compensated for the fact that I was not at Marcus’s side. Besides, it kept Junio (who was in any case a little ill at ease) as far as possible from Lucius, who had probably never before sat down to dinner with a man who at breakfast time was legally his slave. Above all, I think, our hostess wanted to have the higher seat herself, so that she could hear what was being said between her husband and his guest and if necessary steer the conversation carefully away from any possible allusion to the dead man in the yard.

Whatever her reasons for the table-placing, I was glad of it. I was able to whisper instructions to my former slave when – as happened more than once – he was not sure of proper etiquette or had some difficulty in eating lying down, with only one elbow to support himself. In his former short life as a Roman slave, he had never served at table, and we followed Celtic customs in our house.

Once the company was settled Marcus clapped his hands. A player came in with a lute and sang a poem in praise of Lucius; after that a cymbal clashed, and then the meal began. It was a full-scale three-part dinner, no expense spared. The ‘tasting course’ alone was meal enough for me – eggs, oysters, radishes, and sardines. The serving boys who came in with the platters – silver ones, no pewterware tonight! – were struggling beneath the weight of them. Square loaves of wheat and rye bread were brought in, sweet and spiced, new-baked on the premises from flour grown and milled – as Marcus loftily observed – ‘within a thousand paces of this spot’.

Lucius looked pained and commented that Rome was not given to such rustic practices and that he, personally, patronised a baker who made special loaves for him. However, I noticed that he seemed to like the bread, and even more the
mulsum
, or sweet wine, that followed it.