Requiem for a Slave Read online

  ‘His team?’ I said startled. So he’d not just been a casual visitor, caught up in the excitement of the day. ‘Lucius followed the chariots enough to have a team?’

  ‘Not his own team, of course. He just supported them – or rather he dreamed of fame and fortune driving chariots. You do hear of people who manage to do that. I even had a brother who was sold into a team – my parents thought it would ensure his livelihood – and he showed some aptitude, before he broke his legs and turned into a cripple overnight. Then, of course, he was no use to the team and completely worthless in the marketplace. His slave price was so small that my husband bought his freedom with the profits from the pies.’

  ‘So you took care of him? That was most generous.’

  She gave a weary smile. ‘We could afford it then. You would not believe we used to have a thriving business once. People even used to pay us to let them cook their food, in the heat left in the ash when we had finished for the day, not to mention the bread and pastries that we made to sell.’

  I looked around at the ruins of her life and could make no answer.

  She saw the direction of my glance and said, ‘But that was long ago, when we had proper fuel, and I could afford good flour and fine ingredients. And then there was the fire – and everything was burned. My husband and my brother with the rest, of course. I was forced to survive in whatever way I could – thank Jupiter the oven itself was made of stone, and I can still heat the oven if I can get the fuel, though I can’t keep it running the way we used to do.’ She sighed. ‘But Lucius was always passionate about his uncle’s team. That is how he lost the money last time, I’m afraid. I suppose he might have been sucked into it again.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you for your help.’ I turned away. All this had put a different slant on things. If Lucius had been killed because he’d failed to pay a gambling debt, and his money had been stolen as part payment – which was possible – then I was dealing with a different class of murderer, even more dangerous than brigands from the woods. I would have to be careful when I made enquiries. But why would such people seize young Minimus? Did they intend to try to ransom him and thus extort the missing sum from me? And where did Glypto’s stranger in the alley fit into all this?

  The green man! I whirled around again. Of course! The chariot teams were known by the names of the colours that they wore. ‘Which team was it?’ I almost held my breath. ‘Let me guess. Was he by any chance a follower of the Greens?’

  To my disappointment she shook her head again. ‘The Greens? Great Mars! He hated them. He was a life-time supporter of the Reds.’ Her voice was quavering but strong. ‘The team comes over from Corinium now, I think. Is there anything else that I can tell you about that?’

  I shook my head. There was nothing further I could think of asking her, so I took my leave again. At the corner I glanced back at her, expecting to find her hard at work, but she had simply sat down on the littered grass, buried her head in her tattered sacking overskirt and was sobbing helplessly.

  I had meant to thank her for the offer of the pie, but I left her to her grief.

  Eight

  I quickened my pace and hurried back through town. I had done all that I could do for Lucius by now. I had no idea where Minimus had gone and I was powerless to look. Suppose rebels had him . . . but I would not think of that. If I didn’t wish to have my family starve, I had to get that Apollo plaque in place before my customer had second thoughts. Besides, by this time Radixrapum would be waiting for me there, no doubt demanding the money that I’d promised him today.

  I loosened the drawstring on the purse I carried at my belt and without slackening my pace, drew out the three coins that I found inside and looked at them hopefully. The result was not encouraging. I owed the turnip-seller a whole sestertius by this time: a half-sestertius for his help and another for the hire of his barrow, both to be paid when I got back to him. Thank heavens I said he’d have to wait until the plaque was safely laid before I paid him for his silence too. By the time I had paid Radixrapum what was due to him, I would only have a single quadrans left.

  But even that I was going to have to spend. My household would begin to worry if I did not return by dusk. I had to let them know that I would be rather late, but there was no Minimus to act as messenger. That meant paying someone else to go. Of course, my wife would wonder why I hadn’t sent the page, but I decided that the full distressing truth about his disappearance and the murdered pie-seller could wait till I got home. No need to cause her additional concern.

  I found a skinny urchin lurking in a lane – one of the egentes that frequent the town, hoping to earn enough to eat by doing menial tasks like holding horses and selling the manure. He wore a ragged tunic and was anything but clean, but he had a pair of fairly serviceable sandals on his feet, which made it not impossible for him to walk so far, and I guessed that he’d be grateful for my paltry coin. I gave him a verbal message to deliver to my house, and he accepted the errand very readily.

  It was not very satisfactory. I had no guarantee that he’d actually deliver it: it was several miles to my roundhouse, and I had no means of writing anything so I could not tell my wife to pay him extra when he came, which might have ensured that he actually arrived. But in the circumstances it was the best that I could do. I watched him out of sight and then I set off myself in the direction of Pedronius’s country house and the garden where the plaque was to be laid.

  I did pause at the gatehouse at the city wall to ask if the sentries had seen my missing slave but, as I feared, there was no news of him. I gave them a good description and a different account (they had been alerted to watch for runaways), then I set off again.

  It was a long trek from my workshop, and longer still from the swampy river suburb where the pie-oven was, so by the time I neared the villa the day was well advanced. I began to wonder if they would let me in, and, even if they did, whether I could complete the task before I had to leave. (I would have to go before the sun was set – the walk home meant several miles of lonely forest road, I had no lantern and there were bandits in the woods, as Gwellia, my wife, was always telling me.) But if I could get the plaque inside the gates at least, and put it in the garden where it was to be installed, it would be difficult for the customer to refuse to pay. I hurried down the roadway that led up to the house.

  It was a large and handsome dwelling, conspicuously constructed to impress, as befitted a very wealthy man. No doubt that’s why the tax-collector had acquired it. A handsome high wall ran around the whole perimeter, with a gatehouse and a gravelled drive in front, leading through gardens to the handsome portico, while a smaller, rougher country track led round the side of it, winding off to farmsteads in the hills, and from that there was a rear entrance to Pedronius’s estate for the stables, servants and deliveries. That was where I was expecting to find Radixrapum with his load, but a glance along the lane there showed no sign of him. Surely he had not gone knocking at the front?

  I was about to retrace my steps and look when a small boy in a turquoise tunic scuttled from the back gate out into the lane. He was not a lad I recognized from my previous visit, but that was not surprising. He was almost certainly a page, and – apart from the chief steward, who showed me where I was to put the plaque – I’d had no dealings with the indoor slaves.

  I accosted him at once. ‘Are you a servant of Pedronius the tax-gatherer?’ I said.

  The pageboy looked suspiciously at me. ‘And what is it to you, tradesman, whose slave I am?’ His voice was piping, but he spoke with an impudence far beyond his years. ‘Who are you anyway?’ He looked me up and down. I was still in my tunic and working clothes, of course. ‘What is your business here?’

  ‘I am Libertus the pavement-maker,’ I replied with dignity. ‘A tradesman, certainly, but a Roman citizen.’

  I saw him blanch a little. ‘I’m sorry, citizen, I—’

  I cut him off. I wanted information, not apology. ‘I have been working in the house
. Your master has commissioned an Apollo plaque from me. He wants it put around the garden shrine. The site is all prepared and I have come to lay it now if that is still convenient. The work is delicate and I constructed it at home. Someone was to have delivered it for me.’

  His young face cleared. ‘Ah, the mosaic. I heard that it had come, though they are not best pleased with how it has arrived. Still, you’re here now, citizen, and it will be all right, I’m sure. If you go through that gate’ – he gestured with his hand, almost gabbling in his desire to help – ‘you’ll find the chief slave there. He’s the one who told them where to put it when it came. I fear he’ll have a thing or two to say to you as well. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I have a message to deliver before the town gates shut – the steward is displeased enough with everyone as it is.’ And without a backward glance, he ran off down the lane and disappeared in the direction of the town.

  I was a bit nonplussed. I had hardly expected Radixrapum to take the barrow in, but perhaps he had been asked to do so by the gatekeeper.

  I asked the man on duty in the niche beside the gate but he shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about a visitor. I’ve been here on duty all the afternoon – in fact, I’m due to be relieved at any minute now – and the only one to pass me has been that little slave in the blue tunic. Which reminds me, I don’t think I am familiar with your face. What did you say your name was, and what’s your business here?’

  I told my tale again, and in the end he let me in. I looked around a moment, wondering what to do. When I had been there previously that day, there hadn’t been a gatekeeper – the chief steward himself had come to greet me at the gate. And tonight there was no one to meet me when inside or escort me to where I was to work, and no one accosted me as I walked through the stable yard. I went straight across into the outer kitchen court, avoiding the large amphorae let into the ground for the storage of the household’s oil and grain supplies.

  I knew from previous visits where the chief slave had his room – in the front entrance of the servants’ quarters, a large shed-like building forming one side of the court. It was a stone-built, cheerless room, no bigger than a cell, but it was private and, being central, it gave him a useful vantage point, not only across the kitchen court and yard, but also over the separate sleeping areas which lay to either side: male slaves to the left and females to the right. The arrangement doubtless required vigilance, since slaves are the property of their owners, and any relationship between the sexes is not only frowned on but classified as theft.

  The steward’s door was open and I could see him sitting there, on the straw mattress in his sleeping space, poring over something spread out on his bed. I could not see what it was, because at my appearance he bundled it away, put it into a stout brass-bound wooden chest and turned a key on it.

  ‘Well, citizen Libertus?’ His voice was not friendly as he greeted me. ‘You have come back, I see. We were not sure if we were expecting you or not. Your plaque is waiting for you in the stable block; I had them put it there where it was safe. Do I take it that you hope to do some work tonight? Another hour and it will be dusk.’

  Something had disturbed him – the turquoise slave was right. The long thin face, which had been kind enough before, was cold and angry now. I wondered, from his welcome, if I was too late in more respects than one, and if the rumour about Lucius’s death had, by some accident, already reached the house. It was just possible. Quintus could have sent a message here himself. After all, the steward had once worked for him, and the decurion would have taken a perverse delight in sending word that Pedronius’s intended talisman was cursed.

  But I dismissed the thought. The steward had not told me that the plaque was not required, or even complained that it would bring bad luck and demanded to renegotiate the price. Indeed, it seemed that he’d actually had it brought inside from the road. That much was promising.

  I gave him a placatory smile. ‘I hope that I can make a start tonight. I should get most of it in place, even if I cannot completely finish it. Tomorrow there is the naming ceremony of my grandson at my house, so obviously I cannot absent myself from that, but I will be back to put the final touches on as quickly as I can.’ I had an inspiration and added, ‘I hear that Marcus Septimus is already on his way from Rome, and I’m sure that Pedronius would like this done before he comes. I understand he hopes to hold one of the welcome banquets here, and I know he places some value on the plaque.’

  He looked down his long, thin, bony nose at me. ‘You are aware of how much store he sets by it? Then you have a most peculiar way of demonstrating that! It has been treated most disrespectfully.’

  So that was the trouble! Perhaps I should have guessed, since I knew how superstitious Pedronius could be. I sent up a quick prayer to whatever gods there were that my apparent disregard for his favourite deity would not be enough to make the tax-collector change his mind.

  ‘Of course,’ I babbled, ‘I can see he might consider it inappropriate for an image of Apollo to be transported in this way.’ Wheeled through the streets on a street-vendor’s barrow by a ragged turnip-man, I meant, but I did not draw additional attention to the facts. ‘My own slave, I fear, was not available and it was the best expedient that I could devise.’ I tried the smile again. ‘Where is the fellow who delivered it? I promised him money when I got here myself.’

  The disdainful eyebrows came down half an inch. ‘Citizen, that is unfortunate, but hardly my concern. You have a contract, and the price was fixed. If you were obliged to use the services of someone else and were thereby put to some expense, that is your own affair. But was it necessary to have him leave it outside the villa wall and not even send a message to say that it was there? If the gatekeeper had been a little less alert, it could have been stolen or damaged in some way – no doubt those forest bandits that we hear so much about would find a ready use for a sturdy handbarrow, if only to sell it in the marketplace.’

  It was my turn to frown. ‘Left outside the wall?’ I was surprised at this, and slightly irritated with the turnip-man, but, on reflection, perhaps I was unjust. Manoeuvring that barrow with its fragile load over a mile or so of stony road would be no easy task but, as he promised, he had done that for me. If I was longer at the pie-oven than he had bargained for, perhaps he’d been obliged to leave and hurry home himself, since, like me, he would not wish to travel in the dark. He had assured me this villa was on his own route home, though he hadn’t mentioned how far out he lived. But, all the same . . . ‘He left no message? Not of any kind?’

  ‘The gatekeeper did think he heard a noise outside, which might have been a knock, but when he looked out through the grille he saw no one at all, only the barrow leaning up against the wall. Fortunately, he took a closer look and, knowing that a pavement was to be installed, he realized what it was. He had the wit to send and tell me it was there, so I ordered a pair of slaves to go and bring it in. They’ve put it in the stables, as I said before.’

  ‘This all happened in the back lane, then?’ I said, working out that this must certainly be true. ‘And no one saw a turnip-seller? Not at either gate?’

  He looked at me impatiently. ‘Not that I am aware of. Were you expecting one?’ He said it with such obvious disdain that I did not press the point. It was enough that the mosaic had arrived and was safely at the house. Doubtless I’d hear the truth from Radixrapum very soon; he’d want his money, and he’d earned it too, though I was surprised that he had simply left the barrow here and gone. Had he – my mind was racing now – seen something unexpected to lure him down the lane? A band of rebels in that stand of wood? Or someone who might have been described as a green man?

  I shook my head. More likely that a waggoner he knew had passed and offered him a lift.

  The chief slave had seen my movement and took it for dissent. ‘You are deciding that it is too late to make a start?’

  ‘On the contrary, steward, I will get to work at once, if I could h
ave a slave to bring me water in a pail. What about the land slave who helped me last time I was here? If you could spare him, he could lend a hand. It requires someone lively, but there is nothing skilled – just passing things and keeping mortar mixed and wet – and then there is a good chance that I can finish this tonight.’

  He looked disapproving. ‘I’ll see what I can do. But the land slave you mention is away on loan. My master often leases servants – just for a day or two – to help defray their price, and that one’s helping a decurion today to move his kindling pile. And all the other servants have allotted tasks.’

  Suddenly, I had another of my little inspirations. ‘There is a rear doorkeeper who is due to come off duty, I believe. He will be fit and strong. Do you think he could be spared? No doubt he wants to eat. But tell him I will give him a substantial tip.’ It is not uncommon for visitors to give gratuities to slaves, who try to save their slave price and buy their freedom back, but gatekeepers rarely get very much at all. I could afford a half-sestertius as Radixrapum wasn’t here, and I might learn something to the purpose from the man – and earn an ally in the house as well.

  ‘I’ll see if he is available,’ the chief steward said, meaning, of course, that such an arrangement was a favour on his part: the gatekeeper would come if he was told to come – a slave has little choice. ‘In the meantime, I’ll get your water sent and two of the garden slaves will wheel the barrow out to you. You go to the garden and they will meet you there.’

  I made my way around the outside of the house to the area of walled garden where the altar was. It was a lovely place, a small secluded spot, with a terraced walk fringed by tiny hedges of sweet-smelling herbs and a collonade of pillars up which creeping flowers had been trained to grow. The Apollo statue stood at the farther end of it, in its own special niche, with a curved space in front of it where the plaque was to be placed, and a low stone bench on either side of it. Tucked under one of these was a stout hempen bag. I knelt and retrieved it, since it was my own. It contained the tools and mortar box that I had left behind the last time I was working at the site, ready for the task which now awaited me. I had prepared the area with a roughened mix to help the mortar grip, and given it the faintest tilt towards the back, so if my careful measurements had been accurate, I could hope that the linen-backed mosaic would slot into the space and I could quickly build the missing edge to fit.