A Whispering of Spies Read online

  Table of Contents

  Previous Titles in this series by Rosemary Rowe

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Previous Titles in this series by Rosemary Rowe

  THE GERMANICUS MOSAIC

  MURDER IN THE FORUM

  A PATTERN OF BLOOD

  THE CHARIOTS OF CALYX

  THE LEGATUS MYSTERY

  THE GHOSTS OF GLEVUM

  ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE

  A ROMAN RANSOM

  A COIN FOR THE FERRYMAN

  DEATH AT POMPEIA’S WEDDING*

  REQUIEM FOR A SLAVE*

  THE VESTAL VANISHES*

  *available from Severn House

  A WHISPERING OF SPIES

  Rosemary Rowe

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2012 by Rosemary Aitken.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Rowe, Rosemary, 1942-

  A whispering of spies.

  1. Libertus (Fictitious character : Rowe)–Fiction.

  2. Romans–Great Britain–Fiction. 3. Slaves–Fiction.

  4. Great Britain–History–Roman period, 55 B.C.-449

  A.D.–Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-271-9 (Epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8163-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-421-9 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  To Kate and Peter, Cynthia and John

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  The story is set in the winter of 191–192 AD, when Britannia had been, for upwards of two hundred years, the most northerly province of the Roman Empire: occupied by Roman legions, criss-crossed by Roman roads, subject to Roman laws, and administered by a Provincial governor answerable directly to Rome. (This was probably Clodius Albinus by this time, although the date of his appointment is open to debate.) Latin was the language of the educated, people were adopting Roman dress and habits more and more, and citizenship, with the precious social and legal rights which it conferred, was the aspiration of almost everyone. The Emperor Commodus still wore the Imperial purple in Rome, although he was becoming increasingly deranged, and his lascivious lifestyle, capricious cruelties and erratic acts were infamous. He had renamed all the months, for instance, with names derived from his own honorific titles (which he had in any case given to himself), and officially restyled Rome itself as ‘Commodiana’ in his own honour, though there is little evidence that anybody used the term except in dealings with himself. Such discretion was obviously wise. Stories about him barbecuing dwarves are (probably) exaggerated, but the existence of such rumours gives some indication of the man who, fearing (justifiably) that there were plots against his life, maintained a network of spies throughout the Empire – as suggested in the book.

  Glevum (modern Gloucester) was an important town. Originally a fortress, intended to command the river-crossing of the Sabrina (Severn), it soon became a privileged colonia – a retirement town for legionary veterans, where all freemen born within the walls were citizens by right, and where the council enjoyed sufficient autonomy for the town to be a sort of self-governing republic within the province. The original fortress had long since been replaced and resited a little further south, where the flooding of the river would no longer threaten it – which is the reason, incidentally, that the main road to Londinium ran not from the Western Gate, as one might reasonably suppose, but from the northern one, since it went that way to meet the pre-existing road which had been built to serve the earlier fort. On the former site – so fortunately flattened, cleared and partially drained – a lively ‘sub-urb’ had grown up outside the city walls, and this is where Libertus’s notional workshop is assumed to be.

  At the time of this story there was still a garrison in the town, although it was apparently no longer kept at full legionary strength and much of the area formerly occupied by troops had been absorbed into civilian use – there is evidence that the forum itself was built on part of what had been the fort. However, the military presence continued to exist, and the Fourth Gaul Half-Mounted Auxiliaries, mentioned in the tale, was a real unit stationed in Glevum and then posted on, as the text suggests, although the date of their departure is not wholly clear.

  The presence of this garrison was not merely symbolic. Although most of the quarrelsome local tribes had long since settled into an uneasy peace, there were still sporadic raids (mostly against military targets) by small bands of dissident Silurians and Ordovices from the west. It seems that (perhaps as a further act of defiance against Rome, since the Druid religion was outlawed by the state) these rebels deliberately adopted Druidic practices, including the macabre ritual of severing the heads of enemies and displaying them in ‘sacred groves’ as a sort of sacrifice to ancient gods. By the time of this story these rebels had been more or less entirely suppressed and although there were still occasional forays (and the mention of raids in the Rhineland is based on evidence) the events in the story are purely fictional: there is no record that there was any significant rebel activity so close to Glevum at this period.

  Because of its status as a self-governing colonia it is possible that Glevum had no appointed lictors; similarly quasi-independent city republics and client kingdoms generally did not, and there is no evidence to suggest the existence of these officials in the town, although they were widespread elsewhere throughout the Empire, and their reputation would have been well known.

  Effectively a kind of civil servant, exempt from military service and paid a fixed salary by the state, a lictor was usually not drawn from the most wealthy patrician class. Nonetheless he was always a freeborn citiz
en (as may be seen from the fact that he wore a toga) appointed as a personal bodyguard and attendant to some important magistrate, consul or governor. Indeed, the number of lictors was itself an indication of status: thus a consul might have a dozen lictors, a praetor a mere six, while the Emperor (at this period) was accorded twenty-four. (There were other kinds of lictors, too, at different periods, some representing different clans in the Curiate Assembly in Rome, and others who were attendants on official priests, but these do not concern us here.)

  Such bodyguard lictors were generally less revered than feared. In addition to accompanying their master everywhere, even on a visit to the public baths, clearing a path for him through crowded streets and standing beside him when he made a speech, a lictor was entrusted with the punishment of criminals – usually a beating and occasionally death. (When Paul and Jesus, for example, were ‘given to be flogged’ it would have been the lictors who performed that task – and they were expert at it: flogging the victim to ‘within a breath of death’ but nonetheless carefully presenting him alive for whatever execution lay in store.) In short, a lictor was his master’s official torturer and the heavy bundle of stout rods, bound round a sharpened axe, which he carried everywhere, was a symbol of that grim authority. (This bundle, called the fasces, was the symbol chosen by Mussolini in the twentieth century, giving rise to the word ‘fascist’ in the present day.)

  So – like the tax-collectors, who were universally despised – a retired lictor was not much welcomed in good society, unless of course he had important sponsors who must be appeased, or was (as he might well be) an Imperial spy. This story hinges on this fact, and the dilemma it poses for the important citizens of the colonia.

  Most inhabitants of Glevum, however, were not citizens at all. Many were freemen, born outside the walls, scratching a more or less precarious living from a trade. Hundreds more were slaves – what Aristotle once described as ‘vocal tools’ – mere chattels of their masters, to be bought and sold, with no more rights or status than any other domestic animal. Some slaves led pitiable lives, but others were highly regarded by their owners, and might be treated well. Top-ranking slaves might even keep servants of their own – as the lictor’s steward in the story hopes to do – though often they proved unusually cruel as masters, it appears. However, a slave in a kindly household, assured of warmth and shelter and enough to eat, might have a more enviable lot than many a poor freeman struggling to eke out an existence in a squalid hut.

  The rest of the Romano-British background to this book has been derived from a variety of (sometimes contradictory) pictorial and written sources, as well as artifacts. However, although I have done my best to create an accurate picture, this remains a work of fiction, and there is no claim to total academic authenticity. Commodus and Pertinax are historically attested, as is the existence and basic geography of Glevum. The rest is the product of my imagination. (Gaul was of course the Roman province which is now largely France, although it is not certain that there was a change of Provincial governor there just prior to this date, as the text suggests.)

  Relata refero. Ne Iupiter quidem omnibus placet. I only tell you what I heard. Jove himself can’t please everybody.

  PROLOGUE

  The man sat at the table on the bench and carefully spread out one last sheet of bark-paper. He glanced around once more to check that he was quite alone, but of course he had already made quite sure of that: the servants had long ago been sent off for the night. ‘Business matters to attend to,’ he had said. ‘Accounts to settle.’ In a fashion it was true.

  He moved the oil-lamp closer so that he could see, and stirred the mixture of lamp-black, vinegar and gum arabic which he had ready, waiting in the bowl. He fingered the handsome seal-ring beside him on the desk, but there would be no seal or sealing-wax on this – that would not be appropriate for what he had in mind. He smiled; not a pleasant smile. He dipped his iron-nibbed pen into the ink and began to write:

  To Voluus, the ex-lictor of the Governor of the Gallic provinces. I hear you have been looking for properties to buy in preparation for a move from Gaul. So, you hope to settle in Glevum after all? I guessed that you would come here in the end. Did you think you would escape? Fool! I warned you once, my friend, that I do not forget. Set one foot in Glevum after this and I promise you that neither you, nor your treasure nor your family will be safe. You may not see me, but I know where you are – just as surely as you know who I am. He paused, and after a moment added with a scrawl, Your secret enemy.

  He read it through again. Satisfied, he blew on it and scattered dust to dry the ink, then rolled it carefully into a tiny scroll, addressed it ‘to Voluus’, and tied it with a cord. Now, how should he proceed? One could not use one’s own slaves for a task like this. Tomorrow he would find an urchin on the street and have the note delivered to the mansio – Glevum’s official inn where Voluus had been staying for a day or two. Better still, have it pushed in through a window-space, so that the messenger could not be caught and questioned afterwards.

  Of course, when the errand-boy came back to claim his fee, it would be wise to silence him, in any case. Nothing spectacular. A broken neck, perhaps. One more unclaimed body on the road – no one would even notice. Not this time, at least.

  He was still smiling as he took his outer garment off, snuffed out the oil-lamp and – dressed only in his undertunic – lay down on the bed. A moment later he had fallen into dreamless sleep.

  ONE

  Voluus the ex-lictor was a newcomer to Glevum, recently retired from the Provincial court in Gaul, and I had never met him yet – though I could guess from his profession what kind of man he was. Glevum is a free republic within the Empire and we don’t have lictors here, but he had boasted publicly of what his previous duties were: personal attendant, bodyguard and on-the-spot torturer and executioner for the outgoing Roman governor of Gaul.

  People were already whispering that he could flog a criminal with such precision that the wretch was ‘half a breath’ from death, and yet present him living to be crucified – an example of commendable professional expertise, since to lose a prisoner by beating him too much was an official failure on the lictor’s part.

  Of course, Voluus was retired now, so perhaps was past his prime – though no doubt he was still strong. A man must have a certain vigour to carry a bunch of hefty five-foot rods, each thicker than my arm, especially when the bundle is bound round a heavy axe – yet that was the nature of the fasces which, as lictor, he would have borne in front of his master in public at all times. So perhaps he was not as old as I supposed. I couldn’t find anyone who knew what age he was, though I’d spent the whole morning trying to find out.

  I would have liked to know who I was dealing with, but it seemed that very few people in the town had actually encountered Voluus at all. He had yet to move into the expensive apartment which he had recently acquired and no one I asked had met him face-to-face. So far he’d merely paid one visit some time ago to inspect the area, staying at the mansio while he looked round to find a place that suited him. Then, having found one (and allegedly having paid the full asking price in gold), he’d left his steward behind to get the property prepared, while he himself went to back to Gaul to supervise the shipping of his things. Of course, it takes a long time for things to come from Gaul, but at last the move was under way. Of that, at least, there was no lack of witnesses. Half of Glevum had seen the carts arrive.

  Wagon-loads of his possessions had been lurching into town every evening for more than a moon, as soon as wheeled traffic was permitted past the gates. Gossips spoke in hushed tones of what was on the carts – sack-loads of onyx vases and priceless works of art, or maybe it was Gallic silver coins and crates of jewellery: the rumours varied on the detail. Whatever form his fortune took, it was clearly sizeable and the new apartment (which had belonged to a tax-collector previously) was said to be palatial and beautifully equipped. One of my informants – a former customer – had been inside it
once.

  ‘Alabaster pillars and fine marble floors throughout,’ he told me with a laugh. ‘So it’s no use you turning up there, my good citizen pavement-maker, offering your services to lay mosaics in his rooms. He would not hire a Provincial craftsman to do work for him anyway – he’d think it was beneath him, however good you are.’ He looked at my face and added in alarm, ‘Dear gods, Libertus, don’t tell me that you really do intend to call! I’ve heard that Voluus has a wicked temper when he’s roused and flies into a tantrum at the slightest of affronts. What will he think if you just turn up unasked? And he won’t want your mosaics, anyhow. I should save yourself a journey, if that’s what you’re thinking of.’

  But of course that was exactly what I was on my way to do.

  Naturally the errand was not my idea. Left to myself I would keep well away from him – or any ex-lictor – especially after the warning I’d received. But when one’s wealthy patron suggests an enterprise, it is not wise for a humble citizen to demur, particularly when the patron in question is Marcus Septimus Aurelius, rumoured to be related to the Emperor and certainly the most important magistrate in all Britannia. Besides, this was less of a suggestion and more of a command: Marcus had summoned me to his country house yesterday specifically on purpose to send me on this task.

  At the time, I was not sorry to receive his messenger. It had been a bright, cold spring morning – the Ides of March, in fact – which was how my patron knew that I would be at home, in my little roundhouse in the woods, and not in the mosaic workshop here in the colonia. (The fifteenth day of every month is seen as nefas, or ill-starred, but the Ides Martii is easily the worst. Since the assassination of the first Emperor, it has been deemed one of the most unlucky dates in the calendar, so much so that all courts and legal business cease, the theatres close and even a humble mosaic-maker like myself might reasonably shut up his shop and stay quietly at home.) I had been mentally planning a pleasant morning watching cabbage grow.