The Ghosts of Glevum Read online

  ‘Stand back,’ Mellitus advised, and the crowd unwillingly complied. I seized the hair and raised the head again – without kneeling on the floor this time – and on my cry of ‘Now’ the servants hauled, and the unfortunate Praxus slithered and bounced, still face downwards, out into the passageway. His pale blue synthesis rode upwards in the process, displaying a pair of huge and hairy buttocks and an inadequate pair of leather underpants. His hands, which trailed behind him, slithered through the patch where I had knelt.

  I watched him go, and then – mindful of what my patron had required of me – I went back and, using the brass feather-pot as an implement, carefully fished out the bedraggled festive wreath.

  Feeling rather in need of the facilities myself, by this time, I put the pot down, then turned aside and scrubbed my hands and soiled toga enthusiastically in the water bucket – which by some act of the gods had remained standing upright all this time. However, the goose feathers, and a large potted plant which had been placed in the far corner of the room in some attempt to beautify the space, had been knocked over in the disturbance, and now lay with the rest of the noisome rubbish on the floor. It seemed that some of the plant had fallen in the water too – at least, I hoped it was the plant. There was something unpleasantly soft and slippery at the bottom of the pail.

  I flinched as my fingers touched it, and dried them hastily.

  By the time I made my way into the corridor, the group was crowding round Marcus and the body once again. The portly priest of Jupiter, who (despite Jove’s connection with the army) was not supposed to see a corpse, was standing at the back, complaining loudly that this was a dreadful omen and portended woe, but at the same time stretching on tiptoe to get a better view. Only Mellitus kept himself aloof. He had been standing in the shadows, but suddenly he stepped into the ring of light from the torches and declaimed in his thin piercing voice, ‘This is what happens when people have no restraint at feasts, and encourage other men to drink too much.’

  There was a sudden hush. It was such an obvious attack on Marcus that I was surprised that my patron did not protest. Instead he met the procurator’s eyes, and said in an expressionless voice, ‘Praxus did drink rather more than was good for him tonight. I ordered the servants to water down his wine, but he drank so much of it that it made very little difference, in the end.’

  Mellitus looked gratified. ‘Perhaps it is a good thing for Glevum, after all. What sort of respect would such a man inspire?’ People were turning to look at him by now and he adopted a posture like a politician, clutching the shoulder-drape of his toga with one hand as he spoke. ‘A person who cannot govern himself is not fit to govern others. May the gods protect us from such leadership. See what his excess has brought him to, because he could not hold his drink. Ignominy. Desecration. Death!’

  There was a little smatter of applause at this, as Mellitus had no doubt hoped. It was more oratory than conversation, but an assembly of magistrates and councillors enjoys such rhetoric, and the speech was certainly more polished than poor Loquex’s verse.

  Something that Mellitus had said, however, gave me cause for thought. I made my way over towards my patron, who was still standing by the corpse. The slaves had just rolled Praxus over, and as I approached I got my first glimpse of that distorted face, under the clinging wet festoons of Jove knows what.

  If I had taken a moment to consider, I should not have uttered the words which were on my lips. As it was, I spoke before I thought.

  ‘Your pardon, Excellence, but it occurs to me that it is rather strange that Praxus, of all people, should find himself so incapacitated by wine. He is such a giant of a man, and as a soldier surely he must be accustomed to drinking heavily.’ Marcus was staring at me fixedly, but he said nothing and I blundered on, anxious to make him understand. Usually he values my ability to see the implications of events, and I assumed that this was why he’d called me from the feast, and also what he wanted of me now. ‘He must have swallowed a prodigious quantity, don’t you think, to fall into the bowl like that and be unable to help himself? Surely there must be some other factor at work here?’

  My foolish tongue! Too late, I recognised my patron’s warning frown. I looked down at Praxus’s upturned face again. Blue lips, protruding tongue and bulging eyes. Marcus had realised what I had not. Praxus had not simply fallen in and drowned: someone had either poisoned him or – given that red mark round the neck – pulled a cord round his throat and throttled him. Perhaps even both – Praxus would be no easy man to kill. And all this here, in Marcus’s house, after he had been drinking Marcus’s wine.

  I did my best to undo what I’d done. ‘Possibly he had been drinking earlier? Or was he ill, perhaps? Did you have any inkling that he was unwell?’

  ‘He was perfectly all right five minutes earlier!’ That was Mellitus, who had moved forward now and was standing at my side with a calculating and gratified expression on his face. ‘It is obvious, my esteemed . . . Libertus, is it? . . . why your patron wanted you. You evidently have a swift grasp of events.’ The thin lips curved in an unpleasant smile. ‘Did you hear, gentlemen, what this clever citizen observed? Praxus was hardly a man to be overcome by drink – however excellent the Falernian wine – and besides, he was the only one affected, it appears.’

  Not quite the only one, I thought, remembering how swiftly my table companion had succumbed, but I kept that observation to myself. Around me my fellow guests were murmuring assent and distancing themselves from Marcus by degrees.

  ‘Yet Marcus says he watered down the wine before it was served to Praxus, specifically.’ The sub-procurator’s mirthless smile widened. With his fleshless cheeks, his face reminded me obscurely of a skull. ‘That is particularly strange. I wonder what he ordered it to be watered with?’

  The mood was getting dangerous. There were distinct ripples of unease by now. I was aware of whisperings in the crowd. ‘Marcus? Never!’ ‘Well, you can’t be sure.’ ‘That pavement-maker’s right – Praxus is too big simply to get drunk like that, and so quickly too. Besides, Marcus quarrelled with him only yesterday, I heard.’

  I could have cursed myself for what I’d done. The fear of trouble, even by association, spreads like fire in a store of hay. Several of the more cautious councillors, I noticed, had already slipped back into the dining room and others were following one by one.

  The small page-boy who had been in attendance at the vomitorium all evening had brought a bucket of water from the spring at the nympheum, the sacred pool within the grounds that formed the villa’s chief water supply. Now, at Marcus’s instruction, he bent and cleaned the face. It looked more grotesque than ever, and more guests withdrew. A moment later Marcus’s Nubian slave appeared.

  He bowed his head and murmured, ‘Master, some of the councillors are asking for their personal slaves. Should I fetch them down?’ Personal attendants, like my own Junio, having delivered their masters to the feast, are always shown to the servants’ quarters at the rear and offered a more meagre supper of their own.

  Marcus nodded his assent. The Nubian seized a torch and went, and very soon a huddle of attendant slaves was following him back down the colonnade, avoiding our corner even with their eyes. Marcus looked at me and raised his brows. He knew as well as I did what was happening. The first of his well-fed visitors had abandoned all pretence at dignity and were making a panic-stricken retreat into the night, like soldiers deserting a losing general.

  He made an attempt to reassert control. ‘This is certainly unfortunate. Praxus has sustained an accident . . .’

  Mellitus interrupted him. ‘Ah, but as this perceptive citizen points out, it does not seem to be an accident.’ He addressed himself to the few guests who still remained. ‘Now I have a problem, gentlemen, you see. I have the highest possible opinion of our host, of course. Yet Gaius Flaminius Praxus is clearly dead. If he was not simply overcome by drink, then – as our friend observes – there must have been some other factor at work here. Someone must h
ave drugged him in some way, or given him something poisonous to eat, and then – when he came out here, already weak – managed to drown him in the vomitorium.’

  There was a gasp of horrified assent.

  ‘It must have been something of the kind. Praxus was too big to overcome in any other way,’ Mellitus went on urgently. ‘But hear me, citizens. Given that this is Marcus’s house and that we have eaten Marcus’s food and wine, and that only Marcus’s slaves were in the colonnade, I cannot – unless someone can persuade me otherwise – see any other explanation but that Marcus, or one of his household, had a hand in this. Of course, it was cleverly designed to look like a mischance.’

  There were mutterings of reluctant agreement now. Even the priest of Jupiter joined in. ‘It seems that the procurator’s right. Now I come to think of it, Marcus was standing in there with the corpse. I saw him there myself.’

  Marcus said sharply, ‘This is preposterous. This death is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I simply came out and found him lying there.’

  Mellitus said doubtfully, ‘Perhaps there is someone who can vouch for that? Where was the attendant at the time?’ He whirled on the little page-boy with the water bucket. ‘Well?’

  ‘I was collecting water from the spring.’

  Mellitus smiled. ‘How extraordinarily convenient. And why did you choose that moment for your errand, so late on in the feast? Did you receive an order from your master, perhaps?’

  The boy turned pale. ‘I . . .’ He stopped, and looked at Marcus helplessly.

  Marcus said furiously, ‘I did not send him!’

  ‘But . . .’ the slave began, and stopped again. He was sweating and clearly terrified, but none of the sub-procurator’s savage questioning could make him utter another word.

  ‘It does not signify,’ Mellitus said at last, with a contemptuous laugh, giving the boy a push which sent him sprawling to the ground. ‘We shall get the truth out of him in the end.’

  I felt a chill run down my spine. I knew what that meant, and so did everyone else who witnessed it. When an important man is suspected of a crime within his house, his slaves are routinely tortured to discover what they know, since the authorities assume that loyalty to their master will otherwise drive them to lie in his defence.

  ‘By Mithras, don’t you dare treat my attendants so . . .’ Marcus stepped forward to protect his slave, but then stopped in alarm. Clattering into the colonnade came half a dozen Roman guards, in military uniform and armed. Before them they pushed Marcus’s wretched doorkeeper, his arm twisted cruelly behind his back.

  ‘Master, I attempted to prevent them . . .’ he began, and broke off with a cry of pain.

  ‘We are Praxus’s personal bodyguard,’ the biggest fellow said. He had a big, blunt square head and small eyes like a bull. ‘One of the departing guests told us that he was hurt.’

  ‘Dead,’ Mellitus corrected, and stepped aside to let them see the corpse. ‘And therefore it is my unpleasant duty, I’m afraid – and I call on these councillors and citizens to witness this – to formally accuse this man’ – he pointed towards Marcus – ‘of killing him, or, if not that, of having him killed by slaves in his employ. Balbus, have him seized.’

  Everyone looked on, appalled. This was a formal indictment under law. Calvinus Nonnius Balbus was the corpulent decurion who had sniggered earlier at the poet’s verse. As president of the town council he was also its senior magistrate, so during his year’s term of office he was second in precedence only to Marcus himself. He was not sniggering now. He simply gave a little helpless moan and twittered indecisively, fingering his silver toga-clasp as though it were a charm. The few other guests who had remained glanced at one another doubtfully, uncertain what to do. However, the bull-like guard did not hesitate. He drew his sword and signalled to his men.

  What followed was not a dignified affair. Marcus, after a startled glance at me, took to his heels and tried to run. He set off across the inner garden to the gate, while his slaves closed ranks to try to cover him. One of them, who was carrying a torch, lashed out with it, setting a soldier’s beard and hair alight. He was instantly cut down. The visiting dignitaries, shocked and splashed with blood, huddled in doorways and under arches as if turned to stone – like the statues in their damp niches near the garden pool, where two of the soldiers had caught up with Marcus now.

  We could just make out their burly silhouettes against the misty dark as they tumbled him to the ground, seized him none too gently by the arms and hauled him to his feet.

  III

  It was all over fairly quickly after that. The household servants were even now prepared to fight, but the soldiery had swords and they had none – and Marcus himself commanded them to cease.

  He had been brought back to us at sword-point, his fine purple-edged toga mudstained and his wreath awry. He was panting and distraught, but he still retained his dignity. His face blanched when he saw his servant’s bloodied corpse. ‘There is some terrible mistake,’ he said at last.

  Balbus said weakly, ‘There will have to be a trial, I suppose. Oh, Great Minerva! And when I had only a few months to serve!’

  ‘I shall appeal to the Emperor, of course.’ Marcus spoke angrily.

  Even Mellitus was looking shaken now. He said, ‘Of course you must. There was no need for that.’ He rounded on the soldiers. ‘This is an outrage, you confounded sons of dogs! Can’t you see from his toga that this is a man of noble birth? From now on treat him with appropriate respect. I shall see that your new commander hears of this.’ He turned to the still cowering dinner guests. ‘As you are my witnesses, citizens, I asked only that Marcus be accused. I did not call for bloodshed or drawn swords.’

  Bullface said sullenly, ‘Wouldn’t have been called for if he hadn’t run away. And as for that confounded slave, it is an offence to strike a Roman guard – let alone set fire to his beard. He would have had worse coming to him from the courts.’

  Balbus seemed to find his tongue. ‘There is some truth in that. And, Marcus . . . Excellence . . . at the very worst, the court could surely only sentence you to be “deprived of water and of fire”.’ He was intending to be comforting. That sentence means exile beyond the Empire, effectively, since a man cannot live without fire and water for very long, and is a sub-capital punishment for the privileged. Balbus meant that Marcus, reputed to be related to the Emperor, would not readily be condemned to death, even if a charge of murder could be proved.

  Marcus, however, seemed unimpressed by this. ‘Balbus, do not be a fool.’

  I frowned at him. I knew that he had little time for Balbus: in fact I had once heard him publicly describe the twittering decurion as ‘more ambitious than his talents merited, and ready to lick anybody’s feet if he thought it would advance him by an inch’. (Only, of course, Marcus had not actually said ‘feet’.) But Balbus was now clearly in command, and this was not a moment to betray contempt.

  Marcus however, seemed oblivious. ‘I have done nothing! Nothing, do you hear?’

  ‘There’s . . .’ Bullface began again, but he was interrupted by a female voice.

  ‘What is the meaning of all this? Marcus, husband! What is happening here?’

  All heads turned, and there was a sharp gasp from the assembled company. Julia Delicta, Marcus’s young wife, had come through from the new wing of the house. She was always beautiful, but I thought that I had never seen her more lovely than now, standing there in her simple shift in that misty colonnade, her hair twisted up into a hasty coil, with only a thin cloak to shield her from the cold and flimsy embroidered slippers on her feet.

  There was a general shuffle of embarrassment and shock. Respectable Roman matrons were not supposed to appear on banquet nights before the guests had all gone safely home, unless by special invitation of the host, and especially not in such inadequate attire.

  ‘Madam citizen!’ Mellitus reproved.

  But Julia ignored him, and came on. It was extremely brave. She must ha
ve felt utterly vulnerable and alone: her husband was arrested, there were two bodies on the floor, the house was full of men she did not know, she was inappropriately dressed for company and it was only a few weeks since she had given birth – even now two of her serving women were at her side to offer her support. Yet she faced the armed contingent with a defiance and energy which put the rest of us to shame.

  ‘How dare you treat my husband in this way? What has been happening here?’ she cried. Her voice was firm but there were tears trembling on her eyelids and an anguish in her glance which would have melted a statue’s heart.

  Mellitus, though, was a Roman official of the most old-fashioned kind. Women, even wealthy and beautiful ones, were of no account. ‘Lady, do not meddle in masculine affairs. Your husband has been formally accused of homicide and arrested. He will be taken to the garrison under guard, and now the law must take its course.’

  ‘Homicide!’ The lady looked as if she might collapse. ‘But that’s absurd.’ She looked down at Praxus and the slaughtered slave. ‘Oh, dear Jupiter. What has happened here? That is poor Paulus, our attendant – who has murdered him?’

  ‘Stand back, lady,’ said Bullface, interposing dangerously and raising his sword again. ‘You heard what the procurator said.’

  Balbus attempted to intervene. ‘You will be informed when a decision has been reached, and appropriate arrangements will be made for you,’ he said, as though talking to a child. Of course, in the eyes of the law, he was.

  ‘But, citizen . . .’ Julia was about to protest again, but the guard cut her short.

  ‘Lady, go back to your quarters and get dressed. No harm will come to you – provided that your husband will come quietly.’

  It was a threat – unsubtle, but it did the trick. Marcus capitulated instantly.

  ‘Julia, my dear, do not distress yourself. There is obviously some mistake. No doubt my old friend Libertus will help sort it out. In the meantime there is nothing you can do here. You are putting yourself in danger and will catch a chill. Go back to your quarters and take care of yourself – and of the boy.’ Marcus was inordinately proud of his baby son.