Enemies of the Empire Page 4

  I found it. ‘I was given an address. The street of the oil-lamp sellers.’ I paused. He was still looking suspiciously at me and I took the final plunge. ‘A woman named Lyra keeps a house there, I believe.’

  The mistrustful manner vanished, and a leering smile spread across his face. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Is that it! I wondered what you looked so furtive about. Well, don’t worry, friend. You’re in Venta now. No one will think the less of you for having human urges – quite the contrary. At least the men won’t.’ He glanced behind him, and then moved closer before adding confidentially, ‘Have you got a wife?’

  I nodded. I was about to say ‘In Glevum’, but before the words were out, he was already rushing on.

  ‘I thought as much. My wife is just the same! Picked up with this peculiar new cult – you know, the one whose god was crucified, if you ever heard anything so ridiculous – and now she seems to think my simplest pleasures are wicked and depraved. She prays all over me if I have too much to drink, let alone visit Lyra and her girls.’ He poured out two battered beakers of cheap over-watered wine from an amphora leaning on the wall, and pushed one in my direction. ‘She won’t even make sacrifices to the Emperor on public holidays. She’ll get herself in trouble over it one day – and me too, I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve had to forbid her to go to meetings and lock her up indoors.’ He downed his drink in one gigantic gulp. ‘Women! Who needs them, eh? Except in the way you’re looking for, of course.’ He gave me a nudge which almost spilt my drink.

  I wouldn’t have minded: it was horrible – rough and sharp, despite the fact that it was two-thirds water. Even as it was he reached across and wanted to fill up my cup again. I shook my head.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ I said. ‘I must go, or I’ll find the doors are closed.’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t know where you come from, my friend, but round here the brothel doors are never closed. Always some young lady willing to oblige. Here, I tell you . . .’

  I shook my head. I hadn’t meant the brothel doors, of course. I was thinking of the mansio, suddenly, and an unpleasant notion had occurred to me. Once the town gates are closed, the door of the military staging post is barred and a guard is posted outside on the street, so although nocturnal stragglers can gain admission afterwards, it does involve a challenge by the person at the gate, and – dressed as I was – there would be a lot of explaining to be done. My friend the optio would be off duty by this time, and I was not anxious for my exploits to reach Marcus’s ears next day. And almost certainly, I was already late.

  Besides, I remembered, with a guilty start, I had left Promptillius outside the pastry shop, and I could not return till I’d collected him. Promptillius was the sort of slave who, if I’d been captured or carried off by thieves, would never think to institute a search but would wait exactly where he’d been told to wait until he died of cold and hunger – and feel he’d done his duty perfectly.

  I pushed away my half-finished wine. ‘Can you tell me how to get back to the forum?’ I began, but once again the hot-soup seller interrupted me. My apparent interest in the house of prostitutes had evidently made an ally out of him, and now he was advising me as though we were old friends.

  ‘Don’t go to Lyra, brother. She gets all the trade and charges double if she gets the chance. And the town watch are given special terms, so they ignore it, even when her ladies break the law. She’s had unlicensed women there – slaves, widows, runaways, all sorts of thing – and several men have had their purses slit. And will the courts do anything when you complain? Of course they won’t. They’re all the same, these old Silurian families. Look after their own and never mind the rest of us.’

  This was sufficiently interesting to make me forget Promptillius and pause to ask, ‘Lyra is connected to senior people in the town?’ That seemed to be the gist of what he had said.

  He shrugged. ‘Connected to half of Venta as far as I can see. Mind you, it’s not unusual round here. You know what these border families are like. Everyone who is not a cousin is married to your aunt, or was your father’s brother’s husband’s uncle’s wife. You know the kind of thing.’

  I did. There were tribes much like that when I was a boy: whole villages linked by ties of blood and marriage. ‘But Venta is a civitas,’ I said. ‘Surely the whole tribal capital can’t be linked by blood like that.’

  He drained his third beakerful of wine and gloomily filled it again. ‘Don’t you believe it, friend. There are two or three main families who run everything. Hold all the important civil offices and, naturally, own half the buildings too. Everyone pays rent to one of them. Depends which part of town you’re in. They’re always feuding, too, amongst themselves – a lot of nonsense about who supported Rome, and who was responsible for which atrocities. All years and years ago, of course. Most of it is legend by this time, in any case, but they can’t forget. Or won’t, more like. I sometimes think Silurians actually like to have something to keep quarrelling about. It’s the same with these constant little uprisings and forays against the Roman fortresses. They never let it go. Asking for trouble, if you ask me. Can’t accept that we’ve lost the border war and the imperial legions are here to stay.’

  I remembered those dented helmets on the stalls and the tales of marauding ambush parties who still stalked the roads. What would they make of a Roman citizen like me, I wondered, someone accompanying a high-level delegation to the nearby fort, if they found him wandering around the town without protection and without a slave? It was not a comfortable thought and I changed the subject hurriedly.

  ‘And you?’ I said. ‘You’re not Silurian, then?’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of us newcomers, of course, trying to ply a trade or earn an honest crust. I came here from Eboracum years ago. Figured that in a newish market town they needed soup, and since this was on the high road to the border, there would be lots of trade. Too much competition where I was. Had a scheme to take in travellers, too, at one time – there’s a room we hardly use upstairs and I thought it might bring in a sestertius or two – but I thought better of it in the end. Too many fleas and pickpockets in your house – you never know who you might be taking in. You don’t want to get caught up in one of these old feuds by accident, and anyway we’re too far from the gates. Mind you, even the hot-soup stall hasn’t worked out as well as I had hoped. It isn’t easy here. By the time you’ve paid your taxes and your rent and your dues, there’s no more than a bare living to be won.’

  Taxes and rent I understood, but, ‘Dues?’ I said. ‘You mean a payment for the fire-watch?’ I paid a voluntary levy to a fire-watch where my workshop was, and it had once saved it from completely burning down, though it had to be extensively rebuilt. ‘I can see that you might need one, in a trade like yours.’

  He gave a scornful laugh. ‘You can call it the fire-watch if you like,’ he said. ‘Certainly if you don’t pay it there’s a very good chance that your shop will catch alight. Or bowls and equipment will mysteriously break. And of course no clients will ever come your way.’

  I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told you, there are two or three important families in the town. If they protect you, you will be all right. It costs, that’s all. You pay one of their boys to keep a watch for fire, and there isn’t any fire. Change your mind, and there is likely to be a conflagration soon. Of course, it’s impossible to prove anything, and people keep it quiet, anyway. For one thing they’re too afraid of what would happen if they complained to the authorities, and anyway what could the soldiers do? The garrison don’t like that sort of thing – it suggests that there is too much local power and the soldiers are not wholly in control – though it goes on all the time behind their backs. It works, too, in a way. You don’t have trouble if you pay your dues.’

  ‘Who to, exactly?’

  ‘Depends what part of town you live. We pay one lot, down this bath-end side of town – but if you’re down at the amphitheatre end, you’ll pay another
group.’ He stopped, and said abruptly, ‘Now, I’ve already talked too much. If you want those girls I was telling you about, turn left at the next corner and go straight on till you reach the outer wall. You’ll find another thermopolium there. They’ve got a place upstairs. There are illustrations on the wall of what the girls can do. You can’t mistake it. Say Lupus sent you.’ With that he stiffened, looked round, whisked his beaker out of sight and went on in a different tone, ‘Now that’s four goblets of wine you owe me for.’

  I was about to protest, since I had not asked for mine and he himself had drunk the other three, but the appearance of a buxom woman from the inner door convinced me that I was in the presence of his wife. She had a home-made tallow taper in her hand and had obviously come to replace the one which was guttering feebly on the wall, having burned down almost to the fixing spike. I had not heard her coming, but Lupus’s ears were evidently more attuned than mine, and he was so much bigger than I was that I did not argue. I pulled out a coin and paid him what he asked. After all, he’d given me a lot of information, free.

  As I thanked him and went out to the street, I heard the woman’s voice raised in rebuke. ‘Giving him the address of sinful premises like that! Have you no care for your immortal soul? And don’t tell me that you didn’t because I heard every word you said. I wish I could persuade you that falsehood is a sin, even if you’re only lying to your wife . . .’

  I turned away and tiptoed off into the night, not following the directions he had given me, but the other way, where I hoped the forum and Promptillius were.

  Chapter Five

  It was getting extremely dark by now, and I could hear the creaking sounds of carts and shouts and movement in the more distant streets. Like any garrison town, Venta obviously did not permit wheeled traffic within the walls in daylight hours. Here, from what I was learning of the place, the free movement of legionary troops was even more important than it was elsewhere.

  However, in the narrow lane of shuttered shops where I now found myself nothing stirred at all. No donkey carts or lurching wagons here. Even the apartments on the upper floors showed little light – only an occasional guttering candle at a window space or the dull glow of a cooking brazier within. There was an eerie quiet, and I felt uneasy, as if the street had eyes, and unseen spies were keeping watch on me. In fact, when I reached the corner where the dyer’s was, and saw the tiny, shadowed alleyway-cum-drain that I had come through earlier, I baulked at walking down it on my own. Instead I decided to keep on along the slightly wider lane in the direction of the nearest sounds. I could hear raised voices, just a street or so away.

  Even if that route did not take me to the forum, I told myself, at least there would be someone I could ask, and once I had collected Promptillius I could quickly make my way back to the mansio and bed. Of course, I had some qualms about the reception I might receive, both from the owners of the voices ahead and from the soldiers at the mansio gate, but anything was preferable to walking on alone down these dark, sinister and unfamiliar streets. A massive building loomed up to my right. I recognised the public baths I’d heard about, though they were now closed and shuttered for the night. It seemed a shell of hollow emptiness. The walls threw menacing shadows, patches of deeper blackness in the darkened street. I hurried past. I hardly dared admit, even to myself, how welcome the prospect of the military inn – light and warmth and a nice straw mattress safely under guard – had suddenly become.

  I heard a noise behind me – a rustle, followed by a creak. I whirled round, but there was nothing there. In the end I hurried on, growing more uneasy with every step I took. Several times again I thought I heard a stealthy footfall at my back, but when I turned my head there was only the darkness and the shadowed street, though once I did catch a hasty scuttling sound and what sounded like the stealthy scrape of steel, as if someone nearby had drawn a sword.

  This was more menacing than any visible pursuer would have been, and I found myself walking more quickly all the time until I was nearly at a run, but the footsteps seemed to be even closer now and I was almost completely out of breath. I was relieved to see a human form ahead – a trader with a burning torch, whipping and cursing at his donkey, which had stopped dead in the middle of the narrow street and was clearly disinclined to move, although it was blocking up the passageway. I halted, of necessity – and I heard the following footsteps falter too. Taking advantage of the momentary respite, I dodged past the swearing donkey man and his four-legged obstacle, and hurried round the corner out of sight.

  I had turned into what was obviously a more major thoroughfare and I hid there in a shadowed doorway for what seemed an age, panting, leaning on the wall and listening to the thudding of my heart. I kept a sharp eye on the way I’d come as well. However, no one came down the alley after me and after a few moments I began to feel rather foolish for giving way to fear. For the first time I stepped into the roadway where I now found myself and began to look about me trying to take rational stock of my surroundings.

  Everything seemed to be quite normal here. An ordinary street, paved and guttered, and grooved by passing wheels, fronted by shuttered workshops, town houses, flats and temple entrances, like any major street in any Roman town.

  There were lights here too – oil lamps and tapers in the window spaces of the apartments overhead, and two great lighted torches flaming on the wall outside a tavern opposite, making two pools of brightness on the paving stones, and illuminating the faces of a group of youngish men who now lurched, laughing and arguing, from the door. Wealthy Silurians, from the look of them. They were drunk and noisy and belligerent, and I had no doubt that these were the authors of the shouts which I had heard from several blocks away.

  Boisterous revellers bursting from a tavern are not companions I would generally choose, especially as three had clearly imbibed far too much cheap wine, but after the eerie silence of the streets tonight that torchlight drew me as it would a moth, and their rough oaths and guffaws were like sweet music, better than the plaint of any Roman lute.

  I hurried in the direction of the light, intending to ask these noisy newcomers which way the forum lay. As I approached them it became clear what they were arguing about.

  ‘And I tell you, that myrmillo was a fix. There’s no way he could have dodged the net and trident for so long and then all at once gone over like a stone and dropped his dagger on the floor like that, so that his opponent had him pinned down helplessly. And the way the arena judges looked the other way, it was preposterous! Pity they weren’t fighting to the death. I thought they might have done today, but no – only a flogging for the useless ones, as usual. I’d cheerfully have given the signal to have them cut his throat.’ The speaker was a stout red-haired young man, and obviously well-to-do – even in this light I could see that he was dressed in an expensive woollen cloak secured with an elaborate jewelled clasp. He spoke with the careful diction of the drunk.

  The smaller of his two companions laughed. He was a thin, pale, dark-haired youth with a fawning expression and what looked like a rash of spots round his mouth. Certainly there was no hint of beard – the boy might have been fifteen or so, at most, but he obviously hoped to sound like a sophisticate. He said in a tone of exaggerated boredom, ‘Well, what do you expect? The whole contest was only got up at the last moment, in honour of that Roman magistrate. I can’t imagine he was very thrilled. The preliminary show – the comic mock-fighters and the wooden sword brigade – were better entertainment than the troop itself. Then only four proper fights before the light got bad. And did you see the introductory parade? Pathetic costumes – scarcely a plume or precious stone in sight. And as for the heralds and the trumpeters! Wherever did the patron get these people from? I only hope that civic feast he’s hosting now is better organised.’

  The other two ignored him. ‘Now listen here, Aurissimus,’ said the stoutest member of the trio, seizing the young man who had spoken first and pushing him against the doorpost. ‘Don’t think you
’re going to get away with this. I know you and your wretched arguments and I’m not having it. We had a fair wager, and it stands, whatever you thought about the fight. You backed the confounded heavies and I backed the lights, and I’ve got more than a thousand witnesses that my net man won.’

  His victim struggled, but with the obstinacy only to be found in wine, he was protesting still. ‘Only because the fish-helmet fell down at his feet deliberately. I don’t call that a contest, I call that a cursed sham. Be reasonable. I tell you what. Double or quits the next time. What do you say to that?’

  ‘We had a bet, confound you. Pay up, or I’ll have to beat it out of you.’

  ‘How can I reach my purse, if you don’t let me go?’ the other muttered thickly, and then, as his companion grudgingly released him, ‘They don’t nickname you Cupidus, the grasping one, for nothing, do they?’ He gave his neck a rueful rub.

  ‘At least I don’t earn my name for having flapping ears, listening to all the gossip in town,’ Cupidus said, jeering in return. ‘You owe me three denarii, Big-ears! Pay up, or we shall see if you are a better fighter than your fish man was!’

  Aurissimus ‘Big-ears’ was still arguing. ‘By rights I owe you nothing, except a hiding in the street.’

  Cupidus clenched both his fists at this, and I was beginning to think that I was going to witness another contest of my own, when suddenly the third man noticed me. He tugged at his companions. All argument was forgotten instantly, and the three men turned as one to stare at me.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Cupidus, and with a sneering swagger he took a step towards me. ‘What have we got here? A stranger? Where have you sprung from? What are you doing here, alone and after dark?’ His tone was mocking. ‘Come to buy my friends and me a drink, have you?’