Requiem for a Slave (6 page)

There was a solid floor there, to my relief, though it was fully occupied by two lines of trestle tables flanked by high three-legged stools on which the workers perched. There must have been a dozen older lads and men: each had a partly treated hide pegged, stretched out, on a rack in front of him, and was either painstakingly scraping it with strangely shaped bronze tools, or, once that was completed, plucking any recalcitrant last hairs out by hand. This time the men did glance up to look at us, overtly curious, as my guide led me down the narrow zigzag space between the rows.

‘The tannage room is through here,’ he said, gesturing to a doorway to the rear. ‘Come in and we will see what we can do about your coals.’

He led the way into a second room, which clearly gave access to the private living area beyond. This area had the benefit of a stone hearth and a window space, and thus served for the preparation of the tannage mix.

It was clearly brewing now. A copper vat was slung on chains above the fire, and something most unpleasant was bubbling inside, filling the area with clouds of acrid steam which the window space did very little to dispel. The boiling was being supervised by an ancient slave, dressed only in a loincloth, a pair of tattered boots and a heavy metal slave-ring of linked chain around his throat, reaching from his skinny shoulders almost to his ears – the sort of thing one sometimes sees on female Nubian slaves and which it requires a skilled blacksmith to remove. As we came into the room, he was being chivvied by a stout woman in a stained tunic and torn shawl, whose grey hair and skin had been dyed brown by smoke. She held a long wooden cooking-paddle in her hand – I suspected that the slave had felt the blade of it.

‘Get a shovel, wife, and fetch us some embers from the fire,’ the tanner said. ‘The citizen pavement-maker has a need of them. And fetch a taper while you’re at it, and light his oil lamp too.’

The woman looked resentfully at him. ‘Fetch a shovel, is it? Just like that? You know it’s kept outside. And who’s to look after my tannage while I’m gone? Neither you nor your smart visitor could do that, I suppose. And don’t tell me that old Glypto will keep an eye on it – the old fool’s so stupid that he’d fall into it. He takes more looking after than the brew itself. Don’t you, eh, Glypto?’ She poked at the old man with the paddle as she spoke. He smiled, a patient foolish little smile.

The tanner turned to me. ‘Glypto came to me many years ago, as part of my wife’s wedding portion,’ he explained. ‘I’m not sure that he was not the better part of the bargain, too.’

His wife flashed him a look that would have tanned skins on its own, then turned to me. ‘Glypto has got old and deaf and foolish with the fumes, but I can’t get rid of him. My husband keeps him just to taunt me, I believe. Says nobody would buy him, but that we cannot simply turn him out on to the street – though he’s good for nothing these days except stoking up the fire and taking rubbish to the midden now and again.’

Poor fellow! I knew the midden-pile she meant. There was a narrow gap between the tanner’s shop and mine – hardly wide enough to be called an alleyway – which had once led through to a coal store behind the tanner’s house and to the lane beyond, but the tanner had moved the coal heap and the path was now disused and blocked by stinking refuse from the houses round about. From time to time, some enterprising fellow with a handcart came to sort it through and sell the rotting contents to the farmers for their fields, but otherwise the rubbish simply lay there mouldering until the river flooded and washed it all away. It was not a place where people chose to go.

Glypto gave another of his feeble smiles. ‘You want me to take the rubbish to the midden now? But, mistress, I took some just an hour ago?’

She made an infuriated sound and tossed her head. ‘You see what I have to suffer, citizen?’ She rounded on Glypto and raised her voice at him. She said very loudly and distinctly, ‘Listen, you old fool, I want you to stay here while I go and fetch a shovel. My husband wants me to supply some coals to this stranger, though I don’t know who he is or what he wants them for. But like you, Glypto, I must do as I am told.’ Then, with a last long hostile look at me, she disappeared into the living quarters at the back, leaving the old slave to glare at me suspiciously.

‘This is the pavement-maker from the shop next door,’ his master told him with a patient sigh. ‘He needs some hot embers because his fire’s gone out.’

Glypto looked appraisingly at me, and then a look of illumination crossed his face. ‘That’s right, master. All gone out next door. I heard the green man say so when I took the rubbish to the pile.’

I stared at him. I have seen men whom one might describe as ‘blue’, when they were painted from head to foot in woad, but . . . ‘The green man?’ I echoed.

The tanner raised his eyebrow at me to signal what he thought. ‘Ignore him, citizen. He’s apt to give these fanciful reports. I think he gets strange visions from the fumes.’

It would not have surprised me – the pungency of them was already getting into my eyes and nose and throat – but, in the light of what was currently lying in my shop, I was interested in anyone – green or otherwise – who might have been paying especial attention to my premises. However, I did not want to raise suspicions in the tanner’s mind and make him curious.

I was debating what I could say to Glypto that would elicit more, but at that moment the woman came back in with a lighted taper and a piece of shaped metal on a stick – obviously the home-made ‘shovel’ she had gone to find – and thrust them unceremoniously into her spouse’s hands.

‘There you are, then, husband,’ she said belligerently.

The tanner turned to me. ‘I apologize for my wife’s bad manners, citizen.’ He was lighting my taper even as he spoke and motioning to Glypto that he should shovel some hot coals from the fire into my pot. He nodded towards the woman who was still glowering. ‘I’ll chastise her by and by.’

It was clear that he had never chastised her in his life, or she would not have dared to turn on him and snort derisively, ‘You lift a hand to me and I will walk out of that door. Who would concoct your wretched tannage then? And I’d take my dowry with me – then see how you cope.’

‘I’ve a good mind to send you packing anyway. I would have a legal cause, since you never managed to provide me with a child,’ the tanner said mildly, and that silenced her.

It was clearly an argument that they’d had before, and I was glad when the tanner handed me the pot. The embers in it were still red with heat and it was hot to hold – a good deal hotter than I had bargained for – so I almost dropped it. The tanner said at once, in a loud and careful voice, ‘Get a proper carrying-brazier, Glypto, and take these coals next door. Help the citizen to light his fire. When you have finished, you can bring the brazier back.’

I was about to make excuses and refuse the help – I didn’t want the old slave seeing Lucius’s corpse and returning here to tell the tale – but it occurred to me that if Glypto accompanied me alone, I would have a chance to ask him more about the mysterious green man. I could always keep him standing at the workshop door while I discreetly took the brazier in. In any case, by this time he had scuttled from the room, his booted feet ringing on the stone-tiled floor.

The woman looked resentfully at me. ‘So, Husband, now I’m expected to stoke the fire as well, while you lend this man my slave – as if giving him the coals and light he wants was not enough. I hope you are going to charge him for the privilege?’

I am fairly certain that the tanner would have done – it was no more than I had expected, after all – but probably because his wife was urging it, he shook his head. ‘We local tradesmen must help each other, wife. Come, then, citizen,’ he added cheerfully to me, as Glypto reappeared, wearing a tattered blanket as a cloak and carrying the embers in a proper brazier now. ‘I’ll see you to the street and then get back to work. Glypto will accompany you and get your fire alight.’

‘Or at least he can carry the brazier to my door,’ I corrected hastily, before the slave could take his master’s words as a command. ‘Tanner, all this is very kind of you.’ I nodded at the woman. ‘Good-day, then, goodwife, and accept my thanks. Perhaps one day I can return the compliment and find some service I can do for you.’

She mumbled something in reply – to the general effect that she would rather find herself in Dis – then picked up the wooden paddle and turned back to stirring the tannage savagely. I took my lighted oil lamp and followed the tanner through the door, across the workshop and so out to the gate, with Glypto’s heavy footsteps clattering at my heels.

Five

The turnip-seller was still standing outside my workshop, of course, his barrow parked beside my pile of stones, but as I came on to the street, his back was turned to me. He seemed to be giving furtive glances at the door, as if he feared the corpse were likely to do something untoward if no one was keeping a careful watch on it.

But I didn’t hurry back to him. Glypto claimed to have seen someone in the alleyway, and that was information which might help me find my slave. I still clung stubbornly to the belief that Minimus was alive. If he’d been killed with Lucius, his body would be here. Captured, he would have some value in the slave market or someone would demand a ransom for his safe return. I hoped the latter, but I could not be sure, and it was vital I had any information I could find. The living must take precedence over the dead, I told myself.

So I turned to the old slave and gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

‘You saw the green man in the alleyway, Glypto? The one that runs between the shops?’

‘You want Glypto to run between the shops?’ The slave looked mystified.

For a moment I was bemused at this, until I thought about it and realized he’d misheard. I should have remembered that he was a little deaf. There was nothing for it but to repeat what I had said, though this time in a louder voice, carefully articulating every word just as I had heard the tanner do. I saw the turnip-seller glance around at us. So much for trying to be discreet, I thought.

This time it was clear that Glypto had understood, though he was clearly suspicious of my motives for addressing him at all. I guessed that, as a general rule, no one said a word to him except to give orders. ‘I was putting rubbish on the midden-pile,’ he said in a reluctant mumble.

‘Of course you were,’ I reassured him, still in ringing tones. ‘Your mistress sent you there. I heard her say as much. And then you saw the man.’ I dropped my voice a notch. ‘Why was he a green man, Glypto? Was it the clothes he wore? A green tunic, maybe? Or even hair, perhaps?’ That was not a wholly preposterous idea. There are some Celtic elders, especially among the rebellious western tribes, who still maintain the ancient customs of our ancestors and bleach their hair and long moustaches with the traditional lime. That sometimes gives a faintly greenish hue.

Glypto shook his head decisively. ‘Green man,’ he said again. ‘I heard them talking,’ he added, as though that settled it.

I abandoned my attempts at making sense of what the green man was, and seized on the implication of what he had just said. ‘You heard them talking?’ I repeated. ‘So he was not alone. How many of them, Glypto? The green man and who else?’

The thin shoulders underneath the tattered blanket shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I only saw the green man. And I heard another voice.’ He stole a look at me. I must have been looking doubtful, because he suddenly burst out, ‘But pay no attention to Glypto, citizen. Perhaps there was nobody in the lane at all. My mistress says that I imagine things. Glypto is too old and deaf and foolish to know anything. She told you, didn’t she? She tells my master, and he believes it too.’ He said it with such bitterness and force that he made me reconsider my own approach to him. A man who could express himself like that was not an idiot.

‘I think Glypto notices a lot of things,’ I said. ‘More than his master and mistress ever dream he does.’ I realized I had adopted the form he’d used himself, talking about ‘Glypto’ as if he wasn’t there. It sounded belittling and I corrected it at once. ‘So you know there was someone with the green man, Glypto?’ I said patiently. ‘Because although you didn’t see him, you did hear the voice?’

My only answer was a reluctant nod.

I was finding this questioning very difficult, for more reasons than one. Not only was it hard to coax answers from the slave, but a breeze was threatening to blow my oil lamp out, so that I had to concentrate on shielding the flame with my free hand. To say nothing of the fact that I was obliged to raise my voice and I was afraid the tanner would overhear and come out to reclaim his slave. But, for the sake of Lucius and my own missing servant, I had to persevere, in case there was something Glypto knew and hadn’t told me yet.

So I persisted. ‘Did you recognize him, Glypto? The owner of the voice? A man who had dealings with your master, possibly?’

‘No one Glypto knew.’ He shot me a knowing glance. ‘And not a man at all. It might have been a woman, but I think it was a boy.’

‘A boy.’ I felt a surge of hope, wondering if it could have been a small red-headed slave. ‘You guessed that from his speech? But you didn’t even glimpse him? Not his hair or clothes?’

Glypto shook his head. The smile he gave was not so foolish now. ‘Not any part of him. He was hidden from me on the far side of the pile. I couldn’t see him for the rubbish heap. Anyway, the green man’s back was in the way.’

‘So the other person obviously wasn’t very tall? Another reason why it was probably a boy?’

‘Exactly, citizen. Glypto is not as stupid as he looks.’ The old slave’s manner was quite triumphant now. He gave me a crafty look. ‘Why are you so interested in all this, citizen?’

It was a reasonable question, even from a slave, but it took me aback. I debated inwardly as to how much I should tell and decided on a partial version of the truth. ‘There is a problem, Glypto. My slave has disappeared. And – before you suggest it – I don’t believe he’s run away. He was very happy here. I think someone has seized him – perhaps to sell him on. But he was very young – only a pageboy that my patron Marcus Septimus Aurelius lent to me. That’s why I’m so interested in what you have to say. I thought it might have been his voice that you heard, that’s all.’