The Fateful Day (7 page)

I interrupted him. ‘Was this Pauvrissimus, by any chance?’

He looked at me, amazed. ‘That’s right, citizen? How do you know his name?’

‘He was a friend to my own slave, Minimus, who was once a servant here. But go on with your tale. You saw Pauvrissimus …?’

He nodded. ‘He bent down to tie his sandal strap and saw me hiding underneath the cart, though – thank Juno – no one else had done. He put his finger to his lips and gestured to the side wall of the court, obviously meaning I should come round there and he would bring some food. But then the chief steward saw him and shouted at him for taking such at time, so he got up and hurried to the storage courtyard with his jug and when he came back he didn’t look my way again.’

‘So you went to the orchard?’ I glanced at Georgicus.

Tenuis looked puzzled. Then he shook his head. ‘Not the side wall that way, citizen. The other one – beyond the storage yard. It’s high, but there’s a field the other side and a gate a little further down so you can get there from the lane. I knew that’s what Pauvrissimus had meant.’

‘And I suppose he could find a reason to back get into the yard,’ I mused. ‘So that is what you did?’

He nodded. ‘I managed to sneak out again went round into the field, over to where I thought the storage court might be. The wall is high. You can’t see over it, especially if you’re me. But after a while, I heard a whistle from the court the other side. I tried to whistle back, though I can’t do it very well, and a moment later a crust of bread came flying through the air. I picked it up and ate it. And that’s all I know.’

That explained the cut loaf on the bench, I thought. It had not been cleared away. So it could not have been long afterwards that everyone was killed. ‘You were lucky no one saw you!’ I told him. ‘Luckier than you know.’

‘No one except Pauvrissimus, though I expect he told the cook.’ For the first time I saw Tenuis give a shadow of a smile. ‘He couldn’t have smuggled that bread out to me otherwise. All the same, I’m afraid he got a beating over it. I had just started on the bread when I heard a lot of shouting and then a muffled squeal – probably the steward catching up with him.’

‘A squeal?’ That confirmed what I’d been thinking. ‘Oh, dear gods!’ I exchanged a startled glance with Georgicus, who had clearly come to much the same conclusion for himself.

Tenuis misinterpreted my expression of dismay. ‘I couldn’t help him, citizen. I would only make it worse, so I went back to the woods and tried to help the others with collecting up the pile. But I’ll thank him when I see him. He took a risk for me. I just hope he didn’t get into too much trouble for my sake.’

I turned to Georgicus. ‘I think it’s time we told him. We’ll show him what we found – and then we’ll go and get your other land-slaves from the wood.’

The overseer nodded, grimly. ‘I’ll send somebody in with you to tell the Funeral Guild. Then I suppose we ought to find the missing heads. Some of the male land-slaves can institute a search. In the meantime I’ll have some women start on a lament. And there’ll have to be a pyre. There are quite a lot of corpses to be burnt. So there may be a use for that wood-pile after all.’

I shook my head at him. This was not the way I’d meant to break the news to Tenuis. But it was too late. The poor little lad had been listening to all this, and his white face told me that he’d understood exactly what had happened to his friend.

‘Funeral? Heads? Corpses? Oh, dear Juno …’ It was a strangled sob. Blank as a sleepwalker, he took a stumbling step.

I darted forward and was just in time to catch him in my arms before he fell crashing to the paving in a faint.

I
t took us some moments – and half a bucket of water from the well – to bring him round again. When he did revive, the poor child looked like someone who had brushed with death himself.

‘It’s true?’ he whispered, sitting up and shaking his damp locks. ‘I didn’t dream it? Pauvrissimus is dead? Someone chopped his head off?’ He sounded as if he could not believe what he was saying, even now.

I reached out a hand to help him to his feet. ‘Among a lot of others, I’m afraid. If it is any comfort, I’ve promised my own slave that I’ll find out who the killers are, and see that they are made to pay for this – and for stealing everything of value from the house.’

He looked doubtfully at me. ‘If robbers did this, I suppose there is some chance. The master would want them punished for theft, if nothing else, so the authorities would have to help you, wouldn’t they? Though they mightn’t care too much about the death of a few slaves.’

‘Oh, I rather think so. They were his possessions, too,’ I pointed out.

He bit his little lip. ‘I still can’t quite believe those men with carts were bad men – thieves and murderers. The steward didn’t think so. He even let them in.’

‘And now the steward’s dead,’ Georgicus said and sobered him again.

‘But why did they want to kill all the master’s slaves – especially the little ones, like Pauvrissimus? He couldn’t possibly have done them any harm.’

‘Because he saw them. We think they killed the witnesses – anyone who might describe them afterwards. It wasn’t a question of how big they were,’ Georgicus said.

Tenuis was young but life had made him sharp. ‘So if those guards had seen me, I’d be dead as well?’ He turned as pale as chalk and I thought for a minute he was going to faint again but all that happened was that his eyes filled up with tears, two of which spilled over and trickled down his cheeks. He was too stunned even to attempt to wipe them off.

‘It makes you a valuable witness, from our point of view,’ I said heartily. ‘You saw them, but nobody saw you – so they won’t be looking for you and you should be quite safe.’

I meant to be supportive, but the boy looked terrified. ‘But what about when His Excellence comes back? I don’t know anything. Don’t let them question me. I didn’t really look. It’s no good asking me. I can’t remember anything at all.’ He buried his head in both his hands and sobbed like the little boy he was.

I understood his terror. It is commonplace for courts to torture slaves to make sure that they’re not withholding evidence. I put a friendly arm around his heaving back. ‘We won’t let them hurt you,’ I said, trying to sound as sure of that as possible. ‘And no one knows that you were here – apart from us.’

‘Or do they?’ Georgicus put in sharply.’ ‘Have you been talking to anybody else? Any of the other land-slaves?’

The child refused to meet his eyes. ‘Of course not, captain. I wasn’t supposed to come here yesterday. I didn’t say a word. I was afraid that somebody would ask me where I’d been, but the others were too busy fetching wood to notice whether I was there or not. Most of them don’t talk to me, in any case.’

‘Then don’t say anything to anybody now,’ his overseer warned.

‘But you can talk to us,’ I told him. ‘If you think of anything at all that would help us find these men – what they looked like, the colour of their hair, even how tall they were, perhaps – you must let us know at once. In the meantime, stay close to Georgicus. He’ll take good care of you. Go with him now and show him where this famous wood-pile is. I’m going to go to Glevum and call the Slaves’ Guild out to deal with the bodies, but in the meantime we need one of the senior land-slaves to start up the lament.’

Tenuis nodded. He ran a scruffy tunic-sleeve across his nose, then squared his skinny little shoulders and lifted his small chin. ‘Can I see Pauvrissimus before we go?’

I glanced at Georgicus. ‘Better not, I think. But when the Guild have prepared the bodies for the funeral and laid him on the bier, you can walk beside him to the pyre – which will obviously be on the property somewhere – and help lament him then. I think that your slave-captain would agree to that?’

Georgicus nodded brusquely. ‘I suppose that all we land-slaves will have to be involved. That’s all that’s left of the household, isn’t it? Jove knows how I’m supposed to get the grapevines planted now – or what the mistress is going to say when news is brought to her! It will bring her to her child-bed before her time, I think. You’re sure that it is possible for you to contact her?’

‘There’ll almost certainly be a courier from the garrison riding to Corinium anyway,’ I said. ‘There are messages between them almost every day. And if there’s any problem, I’ll hire a private messenger and tell him that the recipient will pay.’ That is not unusual, in fact, since it ensures that your message actually arrives and the rider doesn’t simply take the money and abscond. ‘I’m sure that Julia will agree to your proposals for the funeral. It’s obviously sensible to have the pyre out there on the fallow field – it involves the least expense.’

Georgicus looked doubtful.

I wondered what it was that troubled him. Perhaps he thought that mentioning expense seemed rather disrespectful to the dead. It couldn’t be concern about the sum involved, because the guild would be paying for the funeral in any case.

‘And being cremated in the fields they knew is the best way of showing proper respect towards the dead,’ I added hastily.

But it wasn’t money that was causing him anxiety. ‘Should we wait for permission from the mistress, do you think?’ he said. ‘I suppose she’ll get an answer back to you as quickly as she can. In fact, if she sends a verbal message it could come straight to me. But I wonder if we should begin on the preparations, anyway. With so many corpses, there is a lot to do. We’ll need a massive pyre.’ Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he added suddenly, ‘Though it occurs to me that, while the master is away, I was told that I was answerable to you. So I can reasonably act on your authority.’

I wasn’t sure I altogether welcomed this. I didn’t want Marcus holding me responsible if there were any problems. But it was obvious that Georgicus was right. We couldn’t leave the dead slaves lying where they were. ‘Then, I suggest that you start working on the pyre and I’ll send the Funeral Guild as quickly as I can. I’ll get word to Julia, explaining what has happened, and tell her what we’ve done. Now, since I don’t think there is anything else we can do here without your slaves, we’ll leave this back gate bolted and go out through the front. That’s where my mule is tethered, anyway.’

Georgicus picked up the wooden bar again and slotted it back so it secured the gate. ‘I wonder where that gatekeeper has got to!’ he remarked, shaking the gate to make sure it held fast.

‘I expect he’ll turn up somewhere – dead, more than likely,’ I said, leading the way across the court into the storage yard.

‘There’s the other one to deal with sometime, too.’ The overseer was following closely, with Tenuis straggling a little way behind. ‘But I’ll come back for that – get a couple of land-slaves over here to cut him down.’

I glanced at Tenuis to see how he was taking this but after what he’d learned about his friend, gatekeepers obviously did not concern him very much. His wide-eyed expression was all about our route. ‘Are you going out to take me with you through the front?’ he said, in wonderment. ‘I’ve never been out that way in my life!’ He spoke as if that were a score of years at least.

I managed not to smile. ‘It will be all right today. Just stay with us.’ I led the way out through the little gate and so out to the front enclosure of the house. Tenuis glanced around in awe, taking in the gravelled drive, the handsome statues, garden beds and trees. Obviously his duties had never included sweeping leaves or weeding here!

We hurried him past the little cell beside the gate, but his goggle-eyed admiration for the fountain we’d just passed preserved him from any interest in the gatekeeper’s abode, where – just visible from this angle through the half-open door – the corpse of the unhappy occupant was still dangling from its hook. Fortunately Tenuis did not glance that way.

Georgicus pulled the gates ajar and closed them after us, so that they looked very much as they had when I arrived – though of course they still could not be bolted properly. In the meantime, I untied my mule. She was munching grasses by the verge and seemed reluctant to abandon them, but with hauling and coaxing I got her to the path and with Georgicus’s assistance I climbed onto her back.

‘When you get back to the vineyard, send my attendant home,’ I told the land-slave captain, reaching into the branches overhead to break off a supple length to serve me as a switch. Without it Arlina would stand stolidly all day.

‘Home? I thought you were taking him to Glevum,’ Georgicus replied.

‘Tell him he can help my wife this afternoon, instead. I probably shan’t go to my workshop now. In any case, I’ll let my son take care of any business today. I’ll just call at my roundhouse and reassure him that I’m alive and well, and leave him to make his own way into town. I’ll have to hurry if I’m going to pay a visit to the garrison. And if I mean to call in at the Funeral Guild as well, in time for them to get here before dark, I really don’t have time to wait for Minimus to come,’ I said, peeling the unwanted leaves and twiglets off my switch.

Georgicus frowned. ‘But that means you will be without an attendant for the day, citizen. Would it not be better for me to fetch your servant here? I’ll find a land-slave to take over from him in the vineyard now. I think I know exactly where this clearing is, and I can have someone down there in no time at all. Your slave is only acting as a symbol, anyway.’

I shook my head. ‘If I’m to catch a courier from the Imperial post today, I must be in Glevum before the noonday trumpet sounds. The commander of the garrison is a friend of Marcus’s. When he knows what’s happened here I’m sure there’ll be no problem about those messages. But it is already later than I realised – look at those shadows – and it will take some time to get to Glevum, even with a mule. The forest paths are still treacherous with mud. Better if I go as soon as possible.’

Georgicus waved a hand at Tenuis. ‘Then why don’t you take him with you for the day? He’s not much use to me. But he could mind your mule for you. Or even take the message to the Funeral Guild and come back here with them.’

Tenuis looked rather terrified at this. ‘I don’t know Glevum, captain. I would just get lost. They would not believe me, either, if I asked them to come. I’d have to have a proper message written down.’

Georgicus looked a little sheepish. The boy was right. He was so young that he was an unlikely messenger, and of course the slave-captain – like most land-slaves – could not really read or write.

‘I’ll see to that,’ I offered quickly. ‘I have a writing tablet at my workshop, and a seal. You can give that to the guild. That should be enough authority. And as for getting lost, I’ll deliver you to the proper place myself. But it will save me time if I don’t have to go inside and talk to them.’ I turned to Georgicus. ‘A good idea, slave-captain. The guild will bring him back to you. And it will not slow me down. Arlina is accustomed to carrying two of us, and Tenuis is even smaller than my slave. Lift the boy up and he can ride with me.’

‘I’ll go and get my land-slaves started with that pyre and that lament, and send your slave back home as soon as possible,’ Georgicus said. He scooped the boy up as though he were a sack and lifted him to sit in front of me, where Minimus had been, though Tenuis was so light and skinny that he seemed no weight at all. I dug my heels in, flicked my switch and Arlina shambled off.

I turned my head to see Georgicus staring after us, looking, I thought, a little bit relieved. He watched me for a moment, raised one hand in farewell, then turned and set off running down the lane with that distinctive loping gait of his.