The Legatus Mystery Read online

  That was an unwise question. Marcus flushed with irritation. ‘Certainly I have.’

  Of course he had. As the highest-ranking local dignitary, Marcus had probably spent more time than he wished taking part in public sacrifice, and he could scarcely have avoided the senior local sevir. But I could see what was happening. One Imperial high priest is very like another, and the office is usually held only for a year. If I knew Marcus he would have paid no particular attention to the man. Yet he could hardly admit to that, in the light of this dead ambassador. It might be interpreted as proof of a dangerous lack of seriousness in emperor worship, and anything of that kind would certainly be reported to Rome – the Seviri Augustales tend to have a very high opinion of their own importance. Marcus was sensibly trying to find out what he could, so as not to create a social embarrassment.

  I did my best to help him. ‘An older man, I seem to remember, with greying hair?’

  It was a reasonable guess. Few men came to be Seviri Augustales under the age of forty at least. But the temple slave shook his head. ‘Perhaps you are thinking of the Sevir Praxus, citizen – he was last year’s high priest. Meritus is a much younger man than that – a very big man, broad-shouldered, with darkish skin and curly hair.’

  ‘Ah, that sevir,’ Marcus said knowledgeably, though I was privately convinced that he had no more memory of the man than I had. He held out his hand, so that his slave could slide the heavy seal-rings onto his finger. ‘Where was this estate of his, exactly?’

  The temple slave looked surprised at the enquiry. ‘On the western borders, Excellence. Near Ariconium.’

  ‘The western borders?’ Marcus looked at me and raised his eyebrows. That part of the province is notoriously wild. The thick forests there are rumoured to be stalked by wolves, bandits and worse – the rebel red-headed tribesmen of the Silures, who have never really accepted Roman rule. There are still occasionally skirmishes there, and even the Roman army rarely moves in the remoter areas without a cavalry escort. An ex-slave from that area was likely to have dangerous antecedents.

  ‘So he was not from Glevum? But I presume this is where he took the wreath of office?’

  ‘He has contributed a great deal to the Augustales here. Of course he came here often – exporting wood to Greece and Rome, and selling wool and animals in the local markets. And the metals, too, have always been brought to Glevum to be shipped down the river. He is quite a figure in the city.’

  ‘Ah, of course,’ Marcus said briskly. ‘Now I recall. Very well. Go back and tell this Meritus we are coming. Libertus and I will follow shortly.’ He took it for granted that I was going to the temple with him, I noticed.

  ‘As you command, Excellence!’ the temple slave said, and bowed himself out of the changing room at once, almost backing into a couple of incoming bathers as he did so.

  ‘When you are ready, Libertus my old friend,’ Marcus said heartily, as if I were the one who had been taking a long time to get dressed, and I found myself following him through the outer courtyard. Young men stopped their ballplay to watch us pass, and a party of gamblers, whom I had seen earlier under the colonnades, hid away their dice at our approach and became suddenly fascinated by the wares of a passing food-vendor. Gaming is still officially prohibited in public places and Marcus’s impressive toga was having its usual effect.

  We passed through the entrance lobby and out into the street, and at once we were enveloped by the commerce of the town.

  ‘Live eels, citizens? Fresh caught in the Sabrina this morning . . .’

  ‘Household images, best household images . . .’

  ‘This way to the lupinarium, gentlemen. Nice girls – all with specialities . . . all clean. A special price for you . . .’

  Marcus brushed them all aside, and stepping over the piles of leather belts, turnips, tombstones and ivory brooches set out for sale at the pavement edge, he made his way to the corner of the little street. There his servant was already summoning some carrying chairs, and I soon found myself lurching along beside my patron in a litter. The litter-carriers were skilled and practised, evading the crowds and taking us along at a near-run – so quickly that Marcus’s slave was panting after us, and we were likely to arrive at the temple long before our messenger.

  We turned the corner and into the forum. There were traders here too, of course, as well as the civic offices and council buildings – but mostly the central area was alive, as it always was, with dignified citizens in togas, and self-important weights and measures officers weighing both goods and money on official scales. We came to a stop outside the Capitoline shrine. It is a huge temple complex glittering with wealth, as befits the central shrine of Jupiter in a city originally built as a retirement settlement for veterans: the army has always held Jupiter in especial reverence.

  The temple and its attendant shrines stand in a large courtyard area at one corner of the forum. We got down, leaving the slave to pay the carriers, and as we made our way towards it I felt a little shiver down my spine.

  No doubt it is designed to that effect. The entire complex is enclosed by walls, with a great colonnaded entranceway reached by two shallow steps from the street and protected from the idle public gaze by a verandaed ambulatory on either side. Once through the massive gate – and only then – one can see the central temple. It is a lofty building, made more impressive still by being set towards the back of the courtyard on a podium, up an imposing flight of marble steps, its entrance screened by a further arrangement of towering columns. The mixture of soaring architecture and shadowed secretness is intended to impress the superstitious.

  I have to say that it impresses me.

  To the right-hand side of this edifice, towards the rear, there is an unpretentious building housing stores and slaves where the priests themselves retire to robe and rest. Priests do not sleep at the temple on the whole: most of them have other occupations, too, and keep up houses elsewhere in the town. The store block seems especially insignificant, however, since to the left, set back with mock-discretion in a grove, is the second temple. The temple of the emperors, where our business lay: much smaller than the Capitoline shrine, but no less elaborate – even from where I stood the columns were aglint with gold.

  One of the problems of having a living emperor as a deity is the possibility that the god may one day choose to visit his shrine in person. In Glevum the city fathers had solved the difficulty by building a small Imperial shrine within the courtyard complex of the temple of Jupiter.

  There is an elegance in this solution which amuses me. Jove is generally worshipped together with Minerva and Juno – the so-called Capitoline Triad – so he is presumably accustomed to sharing temple space, while even Commodus can scarcely take offence at finding himself worshipped in such distinguished company. And, should the Divine Commodus ever deign to visit, an effective revelation of his godhead is ensured. There is apparently a private entrance at the back of the complex from the town house of the High Priest of Jupiter, so that any visiting deity could enter the precinct unseen and emerge dramatically onto the front steps of the great temple at a suitably theatrical moment – thereby dazzling the credulous. The chief priest does the same thing at every festival.

  Even the irony of all this, however, did not make me smile today. There was something eerily amiss.

  I looked around the courtyard. Gigantic statues of the gods stood in their accustomed places, gazing down from mighty plinths upon the open altars at their feet. The many-times-life-size faces of the immortals still looked thunderously down upon us from the pediment. But there was something missing. And suddenly I realised what it was.

  The temple courtyard was empty. There was nobody in sight.

  Chapter Three

  Usually, of course, the place is thronged with people. But not today. Today there was not a priest, not a temple slave, not a worshipper – not even a money-changer or a seller of sacrificial birds. Only the stone gods and silent colonnades. I am not a superstitious man
– I have more respect for the ancient gods of wood and stone than for the carved deities of Rome – but standing under the verandaed entranceway, alone with Marcus in that silent place, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. A hundred basalt eyes seemed to be upon me.

  Even Marcus seemed momentarily uncertain, and his slave (who had finished paying the litter-carriers and just now arrived) looked around the courtyard and shivered visibly.

  ‘Dear Mercury!’ he muttered, and when he thought Marcus wasn’t looking he shifted the towel and bath slippers he was carrying and fished in his tunic for a coin. I heard the splash as he dropped a propitiatory as into one of the great stone water bowls at the door. It must have represented his tip for the entire afternoon.

  As if in answer to the gesture a priest suddenly appeared from the temple. Not a sevir, by his robes, but one of the junior Priests of Jupiter, resplendent in a white toga praetexta banded in purple and gold, with a narrow circlet of silver around his head. He moved out of the shadow of the columns and came busily down the steps towards us. ‘I regret . . .’ he began, holding up his hands as if to ward us off, but Marcus cut off his explanations.

  ‘I am Marcus Aurelius Septimus.’

  The young man turned an embarrassed shade of puce. At the name, probably. Aurelius has become the commonest surname in the Empire, but Marcus is widely rumoured to be related to the imperial family itself and (given that patrician toga) the young priest hardly knew how to conduct himself.

  ‘Most honoured Excellence, of course – in normal circumstances . . . But I have been instructed, Mightiness, that no one is permitted in the temple court today, for religious reasons.’

  Marcus regarded him frostily. ‘The Sevir Meritus is expecting me. Would you be good enough to let him know I’m here?’

  ‘Ah! Then you know about the . . .’ the young priest hesitated, ‘the unpleasant incident?’

  ‘Indeed! And who are you, and what’s your function here?’

  ‘I’m the sub-Sacerdos Trinunculus,’ the young man said. ‘The newest neophyte. The senior priests are busy with the rites – there has been a desecration of the shrine, and there will have to be a day of ritual cleansing. I am afraid, Excellence, I shall have to ask you, too . . .’ he gestured apologetically towards the great urn and basin by the door, ‘if you would bathe your hands and face? This is such a dreadful omen, Excellence.’

  ‘Not least for the imperial ambassador,’ Marcus said dryly, but he made the ritual cleansing as requested.

  Trinunculus – the very word means ‘beginner’ so whether that was his name or his official rank I could not tell – seemed oblivious of any irony. ‘I will tell the sevir you are here. If you would be good enough to wait . . .’ He bowed himself away and, without finishing the sentence, scuttled off across the courtyard in a most unpriestly fashion.

  We waited, under the painted roof of the arcade, looking out over the great courtyard. It was eerily quiet, with its dancing shadows and bloodstained altars and the smoke of sacrifice still hanging in the air.

  There is a smell about temples which is unmistakable: part perfumed oils, part charring meat, part fragrant herbs, part abattoir. And hanging over the whole place like a pall, stronger than burning feathers and the smell of blood, there is something else: a scent of human sweat, and greed and fear. It is a potent mixture. I do not know that I have ever experienced it more strongly than that afternoon, standing in slanting sunlight in the colonnade and – ironic after an hour in the baths – rinsing my face in the cold water from the urn. Perhaps it was my imagination, but the water seemed unnaturally cold.

  We waited for what seemed a long time, but at last Trinunculus came hurrying back. He was more apologetic than ever. ‘The Sevir Meritus regrets, Excellence, but he cannot come to greet you in person for the moment. He is engaged in a sacrifice of purification. However, if you would care to follow me . . .?’ He began to lead the way towards the inner shrine.

  I hesitated. This was as far into the temple as I had ever been. I had come here, of course, on days of festival as every citizen is expected to do, to attend the major public rituals – but only to the outer courtyard. The place is very different on those occasions, with half the populace cramming the steps and entranceway to see the processions – pipes, priests, pigeons, sheep and bulls – and standing on tiptoe to see the spectacle that followed – prayers, incense, invocations and the final dramatic moment when the High Priest of Jupiter gives the signal, and the knife is plunged into the creature’s throat so that the hot blood pours out on the altar-front. I have roared with the rest as the heart of the beast is cut out and burned with herbs and incense on the sacred hearth and cheered as the remainder of the carcass is dragged away – sometimes to be roasted and ritually eaten by the priests, sometimes even distributed to us.

  But all this always took place in the safety of the outer courtyard, with the people watching from the ambulatory: only the great and mighty dared to approach the altars or mount the steps beyond. And there were always crowds of people then. Today there was only silence, and the smell of death, and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up at the thought of crossing the inner courtyard between those mighty shrines. Suppose this priest led us right up onto the podium and under the colonnade? That would take us to the real centre of the temple, its most sacred place, the cella of the divinity, which is not usually entered except by the most devout of worshippers. This was a Roman temple, not a Celtic one, and – on all but the rarest of occasions – for ordinary mortals the inner sanctum was a forbidden place. Only the priests and temple slaves could enter there.

  Of course, I told myself, this was a rare occasion. And I was accompanying Marcus, who was a dignitary, with the religious honour due to rank. All the same, as the assembled gods scowled stonily down on me, I hesitated. The temple had already been desecrated. By trespassing into the inner shrine I was likely to desecrate it further. Marcus’s slave was obviously of the same opinion, and he hung back with me under the veranda.

  ‘Libertus?’ Marcus had stopped and was gazing back towards me. He sounded exasperated.

  The possible irritation of the gods seemed suddenly preferable to the certainty of my patron’s wrath. I thrust my damp towel towards the slave and followed Marcus and Trinunculus. Somewhat to my relief, our guide did not lead us into the inner temple, but round the side of the complex towards the Imperial shrine.

  Through the little grove of trees which fronted it, we could see it clearly now: elegant marble pillars forming an outer passageway around the tiny shrine. The outer walls were decorated with magnificent wall paintings in vibrant colours, depicting the Emperor in heroic guise. There was a mosaic, too (of intricate design but indifferent workmanship), forming a path in the space created by the pillars. The entrance was a heavy wooden door flanked by life-sized marble statues in niches, and edged by carved posts in richly gilded wood. Lead curse and blessing tablets were nailed to the posts – only a few petitions, compared to other temples I had seen, but even the Imperial gods, it seemed, are worth a try in an emergency. One supplicant, ‘Lucianus the wretched’, had left a whole cluster of petitions, and there was the glint of gold among the coin offerings in the water basin, perhaps offered as additional inducement for the gods’ attention.

  The door of the sanctuary was closed, and in front of it a priest in mauve and reddish-purple robes was burning something on an outdoor altar while two – clearly lesser – priests stood by. Clouds of aromatic smoke arose, and there was the chanted rhythm of a prayer. The priest raised his hands and wafted the smoke towards the temple, then towards himself, and finally towards his attendants. Then he scattered something onto the altar from a silver flask, and all three prostrated themselves upon the ground. I could not help noticing, as they revealed their feet, that all three were wearing exquisite shoes of costly soft purple leather. Of course, I thought, all Augustales were wealthy men!

  There was a short pause, and then the chief sevir rose, p
ushed back the part of his robe with which he had covered his head – as required for the ceremony – and came striding towards us. He walked slowly and impressively, and I had to resist a temptation to fling myself to my knees in his presence.

  Tall, broad-shouldered, swarthy-skinned, with the bronze diadem of an Imperial priest pressed down upon a riot of dark curly hair – this could only be the sevir Meritus who had been described to us. He was, certainly, a commanding figure. There are tall men in Glevum, but this man was one of the tallest that I have ever seen. He might have been as much as six feet tall – perhaps even a little more – and he was commensurately broad. The hands which he was extending to us in welcome were the size of dinner bowls, and the muscles in the brawny arms were evident even under the heavy folds of the draped robe he wore.

  His voice, too, made the columns ring.

  ‘In the name of the Immortal Commodus Britannicus, Emperor of these islands and of the provinces across the sea, I welcome you to this unhappy temple.’

  Marcus’s voice seemed muted in comparison. ‘This is where the ambassador was killed?’

  ‘Where he was found,’ the sevir said, in a more normal tone. ‘As for killed, I cannot say. There was no weapon, no sign of any struggle, simply the body lying on the floor. I found him, myself, this morning when I went in to read the noontime auguries.’

  I saw Marcus stiffen. There is an official auspex, of course, in any major town, to warn of evil omens and auspicious days – but reading auguries is a particular calling. Men are especially trained to it, and decisions on what should be done as a result are usually made in conjunction with a senior magistrate. No doubt this fellow was a skilled hirospex, entitled to read the entrails of sacrificed animals to judge the pleasure of the gods, but even so the idea of a Sevir Augustalis presuming to read other omens at the temple was something clearly not to Marcus’s taste.

  ‘And what did the omens tell you?’ Marcus said.