A Coin for the Ferryman (31 page)

‘So I understand. They found her with lying with her father in a ditch – both stabbed and stripped and left there by the road. There’s been a lot of trouble in those parts in this last moon or two.’

‘You’re sure it was her father?’

‘Well – we could hardly ask! But he was too old to be her husband. Who else would it have been?’

‘And the rebels denied killing her?’

‘Well, of course they did – according to them they didn’t even know that she was there. But we had the evidence; there couldn’t be much doubt. One of the Silurians actually had the old man’s bloodstained clothes with him, bundled underneath him like a saddle on the horse. And the other had a leather pocket purse – cut off at the drawstring but still full of silver coins. Seemed the ancient was a hermit and lived more or less alone – apart from this daughter whom no one’d seen before – so no doubt the rebels reasoned that he would not be missed. But as luck would have it he had been to town that day, and there were people to say that they’d seen him with the purse and wearing the very garments which the rebels had in their possession. You didn’t have to be a rune-reader to see what had occurred. Anyway, the torturers obtained a confession in the end.’

‘For both the murders? Or only for the man’s?’

He shrugged. He was becoming the impatient one now. ‘I don’t know, citizen. Does it matter? The rebels would have been executed just the same however many people they had killed and robbed!’

‘The girl’s fate may be of some interest to His Excellence,’ I said, choosing my explanation with some care. ‘I believe that her garments were discovered at his house. If it’s the young woman I think it is, that is. Can you describe the girl?’

He looked at me suspiciously. ‘I don’t know, citizen,’ he said again. ‘I didn’t see the victims. I was only detailed to take the rebels under guard, and take them off for burial when they were finished with.’

That was a blow, when I felt I’d been so close. ‘So you wouldn’t know, for instance, if she had greenish-yellow braids?’

He shook his head. ‘Couldn’t tell you, citizen.’ He paused, and frowned. ‘Though, come to think of it, the hair was hacked off anyway – chopped off a thumb’s-width from the scalp, I heard.’ He raised his armoured shoulders in an apologetic shrug. ‘Some of these rapists have strange propensities and do that kind of thing. A sort of humiliation for the victim, I suppose. Like leaving her wearing nothing but those awful clumsy boots.’

‘She still had her boots on?’ This was more than I had hoped. The clouds seemed to stand still for a moment in the sky.

He nodded. ‘So I understand. Not that they had any value, I suppose. They wouldn’t have fitted anybody else. No point in casting lots for them, or bringing them back to the market stalls to sell.’

‘So what would have happened to them?’

‘They would just have been thrown into the public pit with her, I suppose. You could have gone and had a look, if you’d thought of it earlier, but those corpses were put in there several days ago. By now there will be others thrown in on top of them – and very likely they’ll have been covered up with soil to stop the stink. I doubt you’d get authority to dig them up again.’

Poor Morella. By this time I was quite certain it was her. ‘Cruelly stabbed’ and left beside the road with an old man who had already been set upon and robbed so that she looked like another victim of the Silurians, then tossed into a ditch with all the paupers in the town. And rape? That was most likely guesswork – there was no way to tell unless there’d been clear violence, and he hadn’t mentioned that. Perhaps the soldiers had assumed it, because the body was naked and the head was shaved – and it was the sort of thing they might have done themselves. But I was sure that the missing hair was no sexual deviance, but a cold desire to disguise the identity of the victim. Those plaits were so distinctive, they might be recognised and, if my deductions were correct, the murderer had intended that the body by the roundhouse (if it were ever found) should be supposed to be Morella from the fragments of the cloth. So the corpse on the Isca road must not be recognised as hers.

Of course, there may have been a sexual interlude – from what I had heard of Morella earlier, it was more than possible. Possible, even, that she’d agreed to it. The poor girl might have willingly undressed herself, in fact, and made her killer’s job a little easier.

I turned back to the soldier. ‘You think it was a rape?’

He gave me that knowing look again, clearly suspecting me of an unhealthy interest. ‘I remember hearing that she was badly bruised – as if she had been beaten, or savagely attacked.’

I sighed, remembering what her mother had told me earlier. ‘That was her father, not her murderer, I think. He beat her for talking to a stranger in the town.’ Merely for talking! No wonder the poor child had tried to run away.

The soldier was looking at me suspiciously by now. ‘And what exactly is your interest in all this? She’s not your daughter, from what you have just said. And no one has suggested that she was a slave – no slave brands on her shoulders or head, or anything. So why are you asking these questions, citizen?’

‘I told you, it may be of interest to His Excellence,’ I said. ‘I will make a point of telling him how helpful you have been. And now, if you will excuse me, I think I see my slave. It seems that he has now been reunited with his horse.’

I gestured towards the barracks as I spoke the words, and there indeed was Minimus, leading his splendid mount towards the gate. While the guard was looking at them I quickly slipped away. It is embarrassing to be in Glevum without a purse, sometimes.

Minimus was surprised to find me standing there – almost exactly where he’d seen me last.

‘Did you not get your directions, citizen? To find the dancing girls? The man seemed quite certain he could tell you where they were.’ He glanced towards the gatehouse where the tanned guard was glaring rather mutinously at me.

‘Oh, he gave me good directions,’ I replied, ‘and rather more than that.’ I outlined Morella’s story as I understood it now.

Minimus gaped. ‘So you think that someone took her out and simply left her there? Heard about the other victim – and put her next to him?’

‘Or simply found him there, and made the most of it. Perhaps that’s why her murderer chose to go that way. It’s quite clever really. I understand that there have been a number of attacks on that road recently – even without the old man’s corpse, it’s likely that the Silurians would have been held to blame.’

He nodded. ‘I can vouch for that. Marcus was talking about it in the villa, just the other day. Half a dozen rebels have been caught and brought to trial for robbing travellers.’ He gave a troubled grin. ‘He hoped the sentences he meted out would stop it happening again.’

Instead of which, if anything, they’d made it worse, I thought. When the penalty for murder is no worse than that for theft, thieves are more likely to kill their victims – because dead men cannot talk. However, I did not say that to Minimus. Instead I gestured back into the town. ‘You will have to hurry if you want your belt tonight. I will walk the half-mile to this famous inn and see if I can find the dancing girls. If you see Niveus get him to wait for me at the arch – there’s supposed to be a councillor who is going to take us home.’

He was about to ask another question, I could see, but I shook my head and started down the road. ‘I’ll see you at the villa,’ I called back to him. ‘Or at the roundhouse, if you get there first.’ I quickened my pace and hurried down the lane.

It was beginning to get distinctly late by now – not dusk exactly, but getting close to it. Dark clouds were already banking in the west and soon they would blot out what little light was left. I would have to hurry if I wanted to pay my visit to the inn and get back to Glevum in time to catch my lift, without infuriating some important councillor by compelling him to wait. Even the paved roads were difficult to negotiate at this time of the day, but I was almost trotting by the time I reached the inn.

It was a good deal smarter than the last time I had called – the stable yard was swept and scrubbed, the walls were freshly limed, and the old carthouse had been turned into a sort of dormitory. A stout woman in a woollen robe came bustling towards me through the yard as I arrived, carrying a bucket of water from the well. She stopped to fix me with an icy stare.

‘There’s no rooms available this evening, citizen. I don’t take passing trade so much these days in any case.’

I explained that I was not looking for a room. ‘I hoped to speak to the dancing girls,’ I said.

Her expression didn’t alter, but she raised her voice. ‘Rufus!’ A swarthy little fellow, no more than half her size, poked an enquiring head round the door.

‘What is it, wife?’

‘We’ve got another of them, Rufus – looking for the girls! You get rid of him! I must put this in the soup.’ She disappeared inside the building, giving him a shove in my direction as she went.

He stood on the doorstep looking at me with pale, hunted, rheumy eyes. ‘Well, citizen,’ he rubbed his fingers on the sacking apron that he wore, ‘you can see how it is. We have a lot of visitors asking for the girls, but I’m not allowed to let them in. I don’t have any personal objection, you understand, but my wife doesn’t like it – and nor does the woman who manages the troupe.’

‘That’s the one I want to speak to,’ I explained. I could see now why I had been greeted as I had – no doubt a lot of hopeful men came visiting the girls, hoping for a private demonstration of their charms. ‘She would agree to see me, I believe. I was speaking to her after a feast the other night . . .’

I was right. His manner altered. ‘I see, citizen. That’s different.’ But he made no move. I had expected him to usher me inside. ‘A business matter, is it?’

‘I want some information. I want to trace a girl.’ He was still immobile, and I took the plunge. ‘If I am successful, there may be a reward.’

It worked – up to a point at least. Aulus had taught me something. ‘I would like to help you, citizen, by all the gods I would!’ The rheumy eyes were almost watering with regret. ‘But you can’t see her. You see, the girls aren’t here. They’re away in Isca, doing a performance for the garrison.’

I cursed beneath my breath. Isca! Of course! I knew that, if only I had thought! Marcus had actually told me that they were going to go. So all my breathless trotting down the road had been in vain. And some important councillor would be chafing at the gates while I kept his carriage waiting – all for nothing, it appeared.

My mortification must have been written on my face. The innkeeper’s husband (I could not think of him as running the establishment himself) came sidling up to me. ‘If you would like to come back tomorrow, or the next day, citizen? They should be back by then.’ He saw me shake my head, and added sorrowfully, ‘I can’t help you otherwise, I very much regret. There’s no one here except their sewing slave.’

I found myself staring at him in surprise. It had not occurred to me that the troupe of dancing girls would keep a slave, but of course it was likely, when one thought of it – somebody to make those costumes and keep them in repair, and perhaps to grind the perfumes and the paints and help the girls to do their hair before performances? It was exactly the sort of thing you’d use a slave girl for.

‘You want to speak to her?’ the man enquired. ‘She might be able to tell you when they will be back. They pay my wife for lodgings, if they’re here or not – that way we always keep a room for them, and it doesn’t signify what time they return.’

I nodded. ‘If you could take me to her?’ He led the way, into the building which had once housed the carts, and up a staircase to the upper floor. It had once been a sort of storage loft for grain but it was transformed now into a single sleeping room, with two long rows of palliasses on the floor, each with a cupboard at the side of it – some draped with discarded costumes of various vivid hues, others neatly stacked with perfume phials and mirrors and white whalebone combs. There was a curtained area at one end of the room where obviously the dragon woman and her wizened husband slept, and a largish table at the other end. There was a pile of fresh reeds under that, as though it sometimes formed a bed, but at the moment a thin girl was sitting on a stool, stitching at a piece of brilliant orange silk by the light of a single candle mounted on a spike.

As soon as she saw us she started to her feet. ‘Gentlemen! I am sorry – my mistress isn’t here!’

The man made a lugubrious face at her. ‘I am aware of that. This citizen wants to have a word with you.’

‘With me?’

‘In private!’ I added, since he showed no signs of going.

‘Very well. In private.’ He nodded to the girl. ‘But remember, if you need me, I shall be right outside.’ He turned, and I heard him clumping down the stairs. I wondered what he thought I might do to her and how he imagined he could stop me if I tried – he was so furtive and ineffectual I could have felled him with a blow.

The slave girl was still standing and I motioned her to sit. ‘It concerns a girl who came here, a little while ago, wanting to join the dancing troupe,’ I said. ‘A girl in a plaid dress with yellow-greenish plaits. I think she may have somehow obtained a tunic from someone when she came. It occurs to me that, since you are concerned with costumes, you might know if that’s true.’

I had come to the right person, that was evident. Her face had turned the colour of her handiwork, and she refused to meet my eyes. ‘There has been trouble, has there? Someone has complained?’ She picked up her bone needle and began to stitch again. ‘I only meant it kindly – I was sorry for the girl. The lady who manages the dancers was so unkind to her.’

‘You heard the conversation?’

‘I could hardly fail to hear. The girls were downstairs, most of them, rehearsing in the barn. Grandad – that’s what they call him – was down there with the drum: he takes them through their stretches and their movements every day otherwise they stiffen up and lose the knack of it.’

I laughed. ‘So Grandmother was up here, with just you and the girl?’