Requiem for a Slave (15 page)

I said, to change the subject to happier things, ‘And you thought you’d better give me up and set off home again?’

He gave me a sideways, apologetic look, as if I had accused him of deserting me. ‘We did try to find you before we left the town – we even asked the sentry on the gate if he had seen you recently. But no one had seen you on the road at all.’

‘I didn’t come that way – and I hired a gig,’ I said. ‘I can see why you were worried.’

‘The mistress was beginning to wonder if the messenger was right, and someone had indeed attacked you after the tanner had seen you leave the shop! But Junio persuaded us that this could not be true – the messenger would never have got to us in time, not even if he’d come here on a horse.’

‘Which he clearly hadn’t, from what you say of him.’ I frowned. The more I thought about that messenger, the more of a mystery he seemed to be. ‘And he didn’t give you any clue as to who might have sent him, or where he heard the story that I’d been set upon? Even though you went all the way to Glevum in his company?’

Kurso shook his head. ‘Oh, we did not do that. He left us almost as soon as we set off – he could move much faster than the mistress could and he was wanted back, he said. We hadn’t got as far as this when he ran off again, and we did not see him after that. I’m sorry, master, I can’t tell you more.’

So there might have been a horse or an accomplice in the woods, I thought, but then I shook my head. Why should I suppose that there was something sinister? I had never been set upon at all – it had been Lucius. Yet why should someone have supposed that it was me? And why, by all the gods, should a green man – or anybody else – care enough to alert my family?

Kurso saw the shaken head. ‘What is it, master? Something startled you?’ He stiffened and then added in a frightened whisper. ‘I can hear a noise myself.’

I was about to assure him that there was nothing of the kind when I realized he was right. There was a faint sound of voices and a rumbling sound – and it was getting nearer all the time. I tightened my grasp upon my makeshift staff, and said, with more conviction than I felt, ‘Only a farmer looking for his sheep . . .’ I trailed off as I heard a distant thump, and the sound of cursing drifted through the night.

‘What is it, master?’ Kurso’s voice was shrill. ‘Do you think it could be the rebels after all?’

‘I don’t believe so.’ I found that I was grinning out of pure relief. ‘Listen!’

In the distant darkness a familiar voice was saying very loudly, ‘To Dis with this handcart! It’s impossible. Where has Kurso got to with the light?’

Twelve

It took us a little time to reach them even then, and what a reception I received when we arrived! I might have been a hero returning from the wars, the way that Junio and Maximus behaved. They dropped the handcart as quickly as they could, grinning like a pair of idiots, and hastened over – my son to clap my shoulder heartily and the slave to fall on one knee and kiss my hand. But my wife seemed less delighted to find me safe and well. She shouldered past the pair of them, and – far from giving me a fond embrace – pummelled against my chest with both her fists.

‘Libertus! Husband! How could you worry me so much! First I thought that you were dead, and then you were missing—’ She broke off, and I recognized that she was in tears and this was the anger of extreme relief.

I captured both her hands and held her tight. ‘It’s all right, Gwellia,’ I murmured in her ear and felt her sobbing cease. Then, in a complete reversal of her mood, she collapsed upon my neck and – in full view of the servants – hugged and kissed me tenderly.

In the end, I had to extricate myself and say with what dignity I could muster, ‘I am glad to see you too. It has been a worrying day.’ I was on the point of telling her that we’d lost Minimus, but decided that this unhappy news could wait. For one thing, I was not certain that I wasn’t being overheard by unseen listeners behind me in the wood, and I did not want my wife’s distress to give any satisfaction to the kidnappers. So, instead, I went on in a normal tone, ‘But we should not linger out here on the lane. I’ve come to lend a hand. Give me that lamb you’ve got there on the handcart, Maximus: that will lighten the load for you and balance it as well.’ I gestured towards the unattended cart which showed an increasing tendency to topple to the right.

Maximus obeyed, though he struggled under the dead weight of the animal. It was a big lamb and bulky, though the fleece had been removed – there was always a separate market for sheepskin in the town – and he is small and slight, despite his name. But he contrived to help me drape it round my neck, so that I was carrying it on my shoulders as the shepherds do. The sheep was surprisingly heavy – I have felt a new respect for shepherds ever since, though the creature was stiff and perhaps more difficult to manage than a living animal. When I had it balanced, I gestured to the slave to hand me back my makeshift staff, which I had dropped on to the ground when Gwellia ran at me.

Meanwhile, the others had begun to rearrange the cart, which was still piled high with purchases for Amato’s naming day. It was an awkward load: metal trinkets from the silversmiths, the whole family’s garments from the fuller’s shop where they’d been newly cleaned (everyone is expected to wear white at a Roman naming day) and incense for the shrine. There were leather bags and wooden boxes full of foodstuffs too: special sweet cakes from the baker’s shop as well as dates and figs and every kind of fruit. There was also a small amphora full of wine, another one of oil, and even a cage of white doves for the cleansing sacrifice, which had been balanced precariously on the top of all of this – no wonder Junio had wanted an extra steadying hand.

However, with the heavy carcass now removed, the rest was soon arranged and roped securely into place. Junio and Maximus between them pushed the cart and, with Kurso carrying the doves, and Gwellia the torch, our little procession set off in the direction I had come – back towards the roundhouses again.

Only then did I outline the happenings of the day. I kept it very brief and did not mention Minimus at all. The corpse that they’d heard about was the pie-seller, I explained. When the tanner saw me, I was on my way to Lucius’s mother to tell her the news, and then I’d hurried over to put Pedronius’s pavement down. ‘I didn’t want to lose the Apollo contract too,’ I finished. ‘And then I found a gig to drive me home from there, so we didn’t pass through the gates.’

‘So that’s why we didn’t find you in the shop,’ Junio exclaimed. ‘And why no one had seen you at the gates. I did think to enquire.’ He looked at me for approval. I had trained him in my methods while he was my slave. ‘I was expecting that you would catch up with us. I wondered why you hadn’t, even if you left Glevum a long time after us. This is the way you usually come and, as you can see, we were not moving fast.’

They would have been slower still without a light, I thought, using my staff to help me as I picked my way among the muddy potholes and roots along the lane. But all I said was, ‘You must have been alarmed, especially after that peculiar message saying I was hurt.’ Then, suddenly conscious of the distant wolves again, I added, ‘Gwellia, tell me about this mysterious messenger.’

She had nothing to add that I’d not already heard from Kurso, in fact, but I heard her out, knowing that she would be comforted by simply voicing it and also distracted from the terrors of the night.

Junio looked across at me and caught my eye. As usual, he had understood my ploy and he took up the tale as soon as she had stopped – though he had very little to report. He had spent the day exactly as he’d planned, making his purchases, collecting the clean clothes and paying a visit to the local priest of Mars, who was to perform tomorrow’s ritual. ‘The
pontifex
made it very clear to me,’ he added wryly, ‘that he was not coming out of duty – he would not normally come out all this way – but simply because he was “a friend of Marcus’s”. No doubt he hopes to be rewarded when your patron returns.’

‘Then I hope he isn’t disappointed,’ I remarked. ‘Marcus is famously careful with his wealth.’

‘He’s promised to officiate in any case,’ my son replied, ‘and to make the preliminary sacrifice for cleansing Cilla and the roundhouse from the impurities of birth. He doesn’t even want a fee, he says – though he does want you to make a point of telling His Excellence all this. By the way, he says there’s been a messenger and Marcus is already on his way. The letter came to the curia today, apparently.’

I was about to say that I had heard as much from Quintus earlier when Gwellia put in unexpectedly, ‘And to the villa too. One of the servants came to the roundhouse shortly after noon, in great excitement, to tell us the news. The travellers are expected back here in a day or so – though not in time for the bulla feast, of course. But Marcus has sent a gift ahead of him in honour of the day – a beautiful silver trinket for little Amato.’

‘That was very generous of my patron,’ I said, privately suspecting that his wife had organized that piece of thoughtfulness. Marcus is not given to expensive gifts and I had not expected him to send a present for the naming day, even if he knew that it was happening.

He might well not have known. I had written every moon, as he had requested, to keep him informed of what was happening in the town, and obviously in my last I had told him of the birth. However, such letters took a long time to arrive, and since, as Cilla had remarked, the bulla day is traditionally held only nine days after a boy is safely born, I could not be certain that Marcus had received the message yet. I had sent an invitation for him to the villa, naturally – since he was my patron it would have been an insult to do otherwise, even if he was not in residence – but I had hardly expected such a generous response.

So I was more than a little startled when Gwellia said, ‘They are going to send someone to attend on his behalf, though the servant that I spoke to did not know who it was. Marcus suggested it himself apparently, since he cannot be here in person.’

I was surprised and said so.

Gwellia shook her head. ‘It is the sort of thing that Marcus sometimes does – he’s sent you to represent him at a social function before now.’

‘But I am a citizen, and that is different,’ I protested. ‘Marcus has had the villa closed up while he is away and there are only servants there – no one of any proper status as a representative.’ Not that I had any objection to welcoming a slave – after all, I had once been captured into slavery myself – but Marcus would have felt the impropriety of a low-born substitute.

Gwella smiled. ‘So he’ll send the most senior person in the household, I suppose – the chief slave himself, I shouldn’t be surprised. That would be quite fitting really, since Cilla was a maidservant at the villa once. It would be awkward for Marcus to be here as her guest. I know that you and Junio are the official hosts – you as the head of the family, and Junio as the child’s father – but Cilla will be present and the roundhouse is her home. And a very humble one he thinks it, I’ve no doubt. So he’d feel that a high-ranking servant is a perfectly appropriate emissary.’

She was right, of course, but I said stubbornly, ‘Marcus was the magistrate who invited her to dine, and thus enabled me to set her free. And she is a Roman citizen by marriage now, so there can no impropriety in her inviting him. As to it being a humble roundhouse, why should he object? Ours is very similar and he has been there several times.’

Gwellia tucked a hand into the arm that held the lamb in place over my shoulder and said gently, ‘Only when you were ill and could not go to him. Besides, you have invited local farmers to come and join the feast – they may be freemen, but they are not the class of people that Marcus mixes with. And there’s another thing. If your patron were to come in person, he would naturally take precedence in everything, instead of you. So this is quite a clever solution on his part, isn’t it? He attends by proxy and there is no offence – and no embarrassment on either side. And Amato will have a lovely gift to show for it.’

She was right again. I could think of no intelligent reply, so I changed the subject to arrangements for tomorrow’s little feast, and we talked of other matters for a while. It was still dark and chilly, but the wind had died and the forest seemed less threatening now there were more of us – even the wolves had ceased their howling now. After a little we passed the pile of branches by the track, and, as the faint smell of woodsmoke and burnt charcoal reached us on the breeze, I realized that we were getting close to home.

Before I could say so, Maximus piped up, as though he read my thoughts, ‘That must be the roundhouse. I can see a glow. And there’s someone standing by the door. I can see the dark outline. I’ll bet it’s Minimus.’ His face was radiant with a sudden joy, and I remembered how close the two of them had been – so close, in fact, that when I knew them first, they used to finish each other’s sentences.

That recollection clenched cold hands round my heart. I said, as gently as I could, ‘I don’t believe so. I’m afraid I have disturbing news for you – something I haven’t told you which occurred today. I will tell you all about it when we get back to the house.’ I was still reluctant to discuss this where we might be heard.

But Maximus seemed to sense that something was amiss. He dropped the handle of the cart and came around to face me in the middle of the path. I thought for a minute that he was confronting me, but he was too well-trained a slave to do anything like that. He only bowed his head and murmured brokenly, ‘Something has happened to Minimus, master? Is that what you mean? Has there been an accident? Is he hurt?’ He searched my face with anxious eyes, before he said, ‘Or dead?’

I shook my head. ‘I really do not know. I hope not, but I don’t want to talk about this out here in the lane. We’ll get back to the roundhouse and unload these things, and then I’ll tell you everything I can.’ But he didn’t move, and I had to speak severely before he reluctantly obeyed and went back to his position helping with the cart.