Requiem for a Slave Page 10

  But there was no sign of him or of my wife when I peered around the door. It had been left half-open to let the steam and smoke escape, and I stood for a moment taking in the scene. The baby was sleeping in a hammock on the wall, and my daughter-in-law was standing with her back to me, bending over something bubbling in a pot, from which the appetizing smells were rising even now.

  So the first that Cilla knew of me was when I said aloud, ‘Greetings, daughter. Where is everyone?’

  Perhaps I should have given her more warning that I was standing there.

  The effect of my words was truly startling. She whirled around and screamed, dropping the spoon that she was holding into the boiling pot. The infant, woken by the sound, screamed louder still.

  She snatched up the swaddled baby and clutched it to her breast, crying as she did so in a sobbing voice, ‘Creature of darkness, leave this house at once! I command you! Go back where you belong.’

  Ten

  ‘Cilla, what is it?’ I thrust the torch into a holder by the door and strode across to her.

  But, instead of being reassured, she gave another shriek. She put down my screaming grandson in his hammock-bed and stood in front of it, taking up a sharp knife from the kitchen bench. She brandished it at me. ‘Keep away from us.’ Her voice was low and strangled, scarcely like her own – even the child had sensed her fear and stilled to whimpering.

  ‘Cilla!’ I said reproachfully. ‘You know you wouldn’t kill me or stick that blade in me!’ But I was not so sure. Her eyes were so wild that I feared she’d lost her wits and at any moment she would slash at me. My heart was thumping hard against my ribs. Slowly, very slowly, I reached out and gently took the hand that held the knife. I was intending to prise the weapon from her grasp but there was no need for that. She dropped it as though my touch had scalded her.

  ‘Cilla, whatever is the matter?’ I exclaimed, feeling more confident now she was disarmed.

  She didn’t answer, only shook her head and moaned, turning her face away and shutting her eyes tight as if she could not bear to look at me. She tried to snatch her hand back, but I recaptured it. I could feel that it was trembling. I squeezed her fingers gently in my own.

  ‘What’s been happening? Something’s frightened you.’ I reached down with my free hand and picked the knife up from the floor and laid it on the table safely out of reach. To my surprise, I was trembling myself – I felt I had barely escaped without her stabbing me. This day of surprises was getting ever more bizarre.

  However, it was clear that she was truly terrified, and the only way that I could think of soothing her was to ask, in as normal a voice as I could muster, ‘Where is Gwellia? With Kurso, I presume? I thought she would be here. I sent a message that I would be late, but I was hoping for a bite of hot supper all the same. All I could find was a bit of bread and cheese, and it has been a very tiring day. I was bending over for at least an hour laying that Apollo piece in place.’ Perhaps these mundane details would bring her to herself.

  It seemed to work. She opened one eyelid and said uncertainly, ‘Libertus, father, is it really you?’ She squeezed my fingers briefly, then reached out an exploratory hand and touched my face.

  It was my turn to be startled. ‘But of course it is. Who did you think that it was going to be?’ A sudden dreadful thought occurred to me. You sometimes hear of people blinded by the gods. I held her fingers close against my cheek and added quickly, ‘Nothing terrible has happened to your sight?’

  She shook her head and disengaged herself. ‘I saw that it was you.’ She sat down very heavily on a wooden stool. ‘That was the trouble. I thought that you were dead . . . and the torchlight made your eyes look glittering . . .’

  ‘Dead?’ For a moment I was incredulous. Then I understood. ‘You took me for a ghost?’

  She looked at me and laughed – a little sheepishly – then gave a wobbly smile. ‘I can see that I was wrong. You are quite warm and solid and obviously real. And I doubt a spirit would complain of eating bread and cheese.’ There were tears of relief in her eyes, though she wiped them briskly on the corner of her robe and said in something more like her normal voice, ‘I’m sorry, Father. I would offer you some stew, but you gave me such a fright I’ve dropped the serving spoon into the cooking-pot.’

  I had to laugh at this. ‘I would love to taste the stew,’ I said, and meant it too. My mouth was positively watering. ‘I am no phantom, I assure you. But whatever led you to suppose I was?’

  Cilla had turned an embarrassed shade of red. ‘I suppose it does seem foolish, when you are sitting there. But what were we to think? There was a messenger.’

  That startled me. ‘What kind of messenger? An urchin from the street?’ I asked, thinking about the boy that I had sent myself.

  She nodded. She was already on her feet, trying to fish the ladle from the pot, but the spoon that she was using wasn’t long enough. I did not try to help. I knew that this was woman’s work and it would be insulting to offer to assist.

  ‘I would say so, from the look and sound of him,’ she said over her shoulder as she struggled with the spoon. ‘Not a proper courier, certainly. A ragged sort of boy. He must have run here all the way – he was completely out of breath. But he managed to blurt his message and tell us you were hurt.’

  ‘So naturally you thought there’d been an accident,’ I said. ‘And it was a short step from there to think that I might be a ghost?’

  I meant to tease her, but her plump cheeks did not dimple into a smile. Her voice was serious. ‘He didn’t say anything about an accident. He said that you had been set on from behind and robbed, in your workshop or very near to it, and it was doubtful whether you would live. He’d been sent to tell us and to summon us to come. Gwellia gave him money and let him catch his breath, then she found Kurso and they all set off for town at once.’

  ‘To look for me?’ I said.

  ‘To bring you home if that was possible, or to find a medicus if there was time for that. I stayed here with the baby to wait for Junio in case the others didn’t pass him on the way.’ Her eye had lighted on an iron hook hung on a nail nearby, from which a large plucked chicken was dangling upside down. and in a moment she had it taken down and cleaned, and was using it to reach the ladle. She turned to frown at me. ‘How did you guess it was a street urchin who came?’

  ‘I sent a message with such a boy myself,’ I said, and added unnecessarily, ‘but that wasn’t it.’ I hazarded a smile. ‘Though I think I understand what might have given rise to this. There really was a tragic incident at my shop today – someone was set upon, exactly as described, and he died in fact. Only, of course, the victim wasn’t me.’

  She stared at me. ‘Who was it, then?’

  ‘It was that one-eyed pie-seller you’ve heard me talk about.’

  ‘The one that you were kind to, who has plagued you ever since? Junio was telling me about his awful pies.’ I was relieved to see the suggestion of a smile. As if on cue, like an actor at the theatre, little Amato began to cry again.

  Over his wails, I raised my voice to answer her. ‘I am afraid my generosity was the death of him, in fact. In his new tunic he looked quite prosperous. He was outside my workshop, by the look of it, and whoever killed and robbed him dragged the body in.’

  She shook her head. ‘You can’t feel responsible for that! You meant to be a help.’

  I gave a rueful smile. ‘That decision may be the ruination of us both – Lucius lost his life and every penny that he owned, and I lost that important contract I was hoping for. Quintus refused to buy a pavement from me, since the corpse was in the shop. The omens were too bad to contemplate, he said.’

  She had retrieved the serving ladle while I talked and was now spooning steaming stew on to a wooden platter. ‘Oh, Father, what a disappointment. And what a dreadful shock, finding the poor pie-seller in your shop like that. No wonder you are tired and hungry after such a day. Sit on the stool and eat, while I see to the infant and try to
settle him.’ She poured a little stew on to the stone-carved altar by the wall. (It still seemed incongruous to me – an altar to the Roman household gods in a Celtic roundhouse of this kind. I never made private sacrifices to the Lars myself, but Junio and Cilla were brought up in Roman households in their early youth – child-slaves, both of them – and the altar was almost the first thing they had bought to furnish their new home. It was the same altar that would be used tomorrow for the bulla ritual.)

  I watched in silence as she made the token sacrifice, then she handed me a spoon and turned to rock the baby in its hanging crib. ‘When you came in, I’d just got him to sleep and I’m afraid I woke him when you startled me.’

  The yelling was already fading into gulping sobs. I took up a tiny sample of the stew and blew on it. It tasted even better than it smelt.

  ‘Hush, little one,’ Cilla crooned to Amato. ‘You go to sleep again. You may have a big day tomorrow after all.’ She turned to me. ‘And I’d better set to work and get some baking done, and there’s that chicken and a fat goose waiting to be cooked – Gwellia and Kurso plucked and gutted them this afternoon – but nothing will be ready if I don’t make a start myself.’

  I was tucking with enthusiasm into hot lamb stew, but I managed to reply, ‘Ready in time for the bulla feast, you mean?’

  ‘If you are alive, I suppose it will be held – I wasn’t sure if it was going to be. It’s hardly fitting to hold a naming day when there has been a family death – as Quintus would have said, the omens are too bad – although tomorrow is the ninth day after Amato’s birth. I was waiting for Junio and Gwellia to come home, to find out whether you were still alive before we finally decided what to do. When I first heard footsteps, I thought you might be them – they would have had time to come and go to Glevum by this time. Mother-in-law and Kurso left here hours ago. There’s a good boy, Amato.’

  The whimpers had stopped as if by magic now, and my little grandson was gurgling up at her. She gave him a finger and he sucked at it, then slowly closed his eyes. Only then did she withdraw her hand and tiptoe back to me.

  ‘What happened to the corpse? It has been disposed of properly, I hope? Otherwise the auguries will still be terrible.’ She spoke in a low voice, as if the fates might overhear.

  I nodded through another mouthful of delight. ‘It has been taken care of, don’t worry about that. Quintus got the military cart to come and take it to the pit. And I did what I could to respect the dead man first: lit a candle at the head and feet, closed the eyes – as nearly as I could – and called his name three times. And washed my hands three times with water afterwards, as ritual demands. I told his mother what I’d done and she was much relieved – she could not have afforded a proper funeral.’

  Cilla smiled. ‘Poor father. I suppose you had to go and break the news to her?’ She moved to the table and took up the knife again, though this time it was only to chop a bunch of herbs. ‘You’ve had a busy day. The pie-seller was killed when you were out laying the Apollo piece, I suppose?’

  I was about to tell her otherwise when a thought occurred to me. ‘I wonder how your urchin came to know about the death? I was there when the army came to take the corpse away, and there was no one in the street who could have spread the news – I remember being grateful about that at the time. But obviously somebody learned of it, and very early on if the message got here long enough ago for Gwellia to have time since to get to town and back. At what sort of hour did the boy arrive?’

  She shrugged. ‘I can’t tell precisely. But the sun was past its height – I noticed it was just behind that tall tree over there.’

  I looked in the direction of the oak she pointed to and did a little calculation in my head. The Romans divide daylight into twelve equal hours, and the dark into the same, though obviously the length will differ with the time of year. But taking the season into consideration and looking at the tree, I could make an estimate.

  ‘So it was around the eighth hour, more or less, which means he left the town an hour or so before. Certainly, Lucius was dead by then. But even if the urchin ran here all the way,’ I fretted, ‘I can’t see how he knew in time to manage that. Unless one of the soldiers gossiped straight away when they got back to base. The commander at the garrison knows me, after all? And he’s one of Marcus’s friends. He might have sent the message, possibly.’

  I saw that Cilla was making a gesture of dissent.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘That makes no sense at all. The commander would have sent a soldier, if he’d sent anyone, and anyway the army knew that I was still alive – they’d seen me when they came to take away the corpse. Yet someone must have sent the boy and given him directions as to where I lived. And no doubt paid him too. But who in Glevum was likely to do that?’

  Cilla had picked up the dead chicken by its feet and now held it by its claws, so that the head drooped downward as she made little knife-slits in the dimpled skin. ‘Nobody paid him; he was promised money when he got here,’ she replied, stuffing the chopped herbs into the slits she’d made. ‘That’s why Gwellia gave him a coin before she left. As to who sent him, that’s not a mystery. It was Minimus – at least that’s what he said.’

  ‘Minimus!’ I almost dropped my own spoon into the stew. ‘It cannot possibly have been.’

  She looked surprised. ‘A red-haired slave had sent him, that’s what the urchin said – or, rather, panted out. That is why we never doubted that the message was the truth.’ She stopped with a handful of chopped parsley in mid-air. ‘He might have been talking about Maximus, I suppose, but Minimus was attending you, so we naturally supposed that it was him.’ Her plump face creased into a puzzled frown. ‘Where is he, anyway? Isn’t he with you?’

  I gave a despairing groan and shook my head. ‘That is another of the mysteries of today. Minimus is missing – he has disappeared. It seems whoever murdered Lucius has kidnapped him as well. I feared the rebels might have been responsible and I was hoping to find a demand for ransom waiting for me here. But there has been nothing?’ I enquired, knowing with a sinking heart that this was true.

  ‘Nothing,’ she confirmed. She had turned very pale. ‘Oh, poor Father, what a day you’ve had. That will have upset you, more even than the death. Let me heat some water and prepare hot mead for you. I’m sure that you must need it, and, for once, I might have some myself. The midwife recommends it as a restorative.’

  I was instantly flooded with remorse. It was only eight days since the poor girl had given birth, and it was no wonder that she was looking white and strained. In a wealthy Roman household, she might still be lying in, though in humbler houses women rise as soon as they have strength. All the same, I understood why she’d not cooked the fowl or tried to bake the bread and oatcakes on her own – not only was she tired, but some sects will not permit their followers to eat the food prepared by a new mother after a birth until she has undergone a cleansing ritual. Some of the guests invited for tomorrow’s bulla feast might well hold such superstitious views.

  I said, ‘Hot mead is a very good idea. You’ve had a shock as well – although a needless one. I will prepare it. I have done it many times.’ Without a murmur, she sat down on the stool. I took the half-stuffed chicken and placed it on the bench, and went to find the jar of mead that the household kept in store for me. Junio has more Roman tastes and likes a jug of wine; there was a full amphora of it leaning by the wall.

  She watched me put water on the fire to heat. ‘Poor Minimus, I can’t bear to think of it,’ she said. She had worked beside him at my patron’s for a time and was quite fond of him. ‘I hope that he’s unharmed and you get him safely back – for your sake, father, just as much as his. Otherwise, what will Marcus say when he returns?’

  It was almost the first thing that everyone had said, and something which I did not want to contemplate. I knew exactly how my patron would react. He would be furious and then demand the slave price, which would be very high. Both of those pages were very h
ighly trained and worth a great deal more than I could possibly afford. And he might demand the right to restitution too – four times the value was the usual amount. My hand was trembling as I poured the mead into a jug and added a scoop of honey to the mix.

  ‘I wish I knew where I could start to look for him,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t suppose that Minimus really sent that messenger? He didn’t see the pie-seller attacked and thought that it was you? It might have looked quite like you from a distance, I suppose. The pie-seller was wearing your old tunic, after all. If Minimus had been absent – on an errand, let us say – and from a distance witnessed the assault, wouldn’t he have tried to send a message home and set off somewhere to find help himself? He might be at your workshop with a medicus right now!’

  This was an attractive theory, and for a moment I was tempted to agree, but an instant’s contemplation made me shake my head. ‘Minimus would have known me from the pie-seller, however far away he might have been. Besides, if he thought he’d seen me set upon and hurt, he would have come running to look after me and he would soon have realized that it was Lucius.’

  She was obliged to recognize the truth of this and nodded dismally. ‘And if he thought it fatal, he would have brought the news himself.’ But she did not give up. She was determined to help me think this through. ‘Perhaps it was someone else who looked into the shop? Some customer who didn’t know you very well, but saw the corpse and thought that it was you? Though the pie-seller is very distinctive isn’t he – with a scarred face and only one good eye?’

  I considered her suggestion. It was a hopeful one. Perhaps something of the kind was possible. Lucius had been lying face down on the floor, and anyone who glimpsed him would not have seen his face. But then I saw the truth and shook my head again. ‘That is an interesting idea, but there’s a flaw in it, I fear. The murderer had doused the fire and lights and put the shutters up. The whole shop was in darkness. I nearly fell over Lucius myself. No mere passing customer could have seen that he was there.’ I mixed the water with the honeyed mead and poured some out for her.