A Coin for the Ferryman (3 page)

There was only one thing remaining to be done, and Lucius was looking expectantly at me. I reached into my toga folds and produced the purse of money which my fictional opponent would expect for his part in the proceedings. It was a considerable sum – to me in any case – arranged a day or two ago with Lucius’s chief slave: a sandy-headed fellow with calculating eyes, whose expensive olive tunic could not disguise his air of general menace, and whose steely courtesy – combined with the flexing of his enormous hands – had somehow induced me to agree to rather more than I could comfortably afford.

Lucius weighed the purse a moment in his hand, rather disdainfully I thought, before he slipped it into a belt-pouch underneath his robes. Then he turned and with conscious dignity went back to occupy his former seat, while I bowed myself backwards by a pace or two. Junio did the same. Then, having completed the formalities, we made our way out of the basilica into the brightness of the forum, leaving Marcus and his fellow councillors to deal with the other official business of the day.

The forum was full of business, as it always was. Colourful stalls and fortune-tellers huddled round the walls, scribes and money-changers plied their trade in booths, and self-important citizens went striding up the colonnaded path, or stood on the steps of the basilica to be seen.

Gwellia, my wife, was waiting for us there. She had been watching the proceedings inside the hall, though of course, as a woman she’d played no part in them – a female is not legally entitled to adopt, being technically only a child herself in law. She smiled, but gave Junio only a very brief embrace – not because she was not delighted to greet him as her son, but because public displays of emotion are not expected of Roman citizens.

Besides, there was a little sadness in the greeting too. We had hoped – Gwellia and I – to adopt another child, an infant orphan girl, whose remaining family had fled into exile and left her behind. It would have been a much simpler matter than adopting Junio, since she was both female and freeborn – merely a question of fictitiously buying her, just once, from someone representing her missing family.

But events had not transpired as Gwellia had hoped. We had taken the child into the household for a moon or so and she had not thrived. She refused to eat and grew quite pale and sick – used, I suppose, to childish company, though perhaps also partly because she was not fully weaned. She proved to be a constant worry in the house, attempting to climb into the fire and eating Gwellia’s dyes. In the end we were forced to place her with a family in the woods, a woman with several children of her own who had looked after the infant sometimes when her mother was alive. The joyful reunion was almost unbearably touching to see, and the decision was clearly for the best, especially since the few
denarii
we paid towards Longina’s keep were an enormous bonus for the family. We’d declared ourselves her sponsors (simply a matter of a statement to the court) so she was still officially our ward, but it had been a painful decision for my wife. Gwellia had always longed for children but we two had been wrenched apart when we were young and sold to slavery, and by the time we were reunited we were too old to have any natural offspring of our own.

Nevertheless, she now had a strapping son. He’d called her ‘Mother’ and it pleased her, I could see. ‘Perhaps I should find a litter for you,’ he went on. ‘There is to be a banquet for us all at Marcus’s villa tonight, and you will want to get home and prepare.’

I shook my head. ‘Junio, you are not a slave,’ I said. ‘If we want transport, we will find a hiring carriage that will take all three of us. And Cilla too, if she is still about.’

‘Here, master!’ Cilla was at my elbow, flourishing a fish. ‘I was only over at the fish market buying this, but they had so many good fish in the pool that it took me a little moment to decide. I’m sorry, master. The mistress sent me, but I did not mean to leave her unattended for so long.’

I nodded. Cilla was my wife’s attendant slave, given to me some little time ago by Marcus Septimus in return for a favour I had done for him. She was a plump, resourceful little thing, and Gwellia was very fond of her. And so, I knew, was my adopted son, who was looking at her with approval now.

It was mutual. She looked him up and down. ‘My word, Master Junio, you look so elegant,’ she said. ‘You are so Roman in that toga, I hardly dare to speak.’ It was nonsense, though. Cilla would have chattered cheerfully to Jupiter himself, if he had happened to appear in Glevum.

‘There will be time enough for compliments a little later on,’ I said. ‘After the banquet, when we get back to it. In the meantime we should go and find that cart.’

Cilla had turned a charming shade of pink. She knew exactly what I was referring to. The banquet had been arranged by Marcus for his Roman guest, and my little family had been invited too. It was a kind of triple compliment to us – a token of respect and thanks for me, a celebration for Junio, and an opportunity for me to informally emancipate the girl, by announcing before the assembled company of Roman citizens that Cilla was now free and inviting her to join us for the final course. It was all the ceremony needed to free a female slave.

‘I can’t believe it, master. Me, at such a feast! With Lucius Julianus there as well. And the mistress has given me such a pretty gown.’

I grinned. No doubt Lucius Julianus would look disdainfully at us, but Marcus was such a power now that an invitation to his table was an honour to be sought, however lowly the other guests might be. ‘Then, when you and Junio are wed, I hope you remember who made it possible and are duly grateful to His Excellence. I don’t have the wealth and contacts to host such a feast myself – nor the servants either, especially after this!’

Gwellia nodded. ‘There is only little Kurso to run the household now.’ She said it ruefully. Poor Kurso’d had a dreadful master when he was young, and could still move faster backwards than forwards. He had come to us as a kitchen slave but he was so nervous and clumsy that he was not much use at all, except outdoors. He was happy enough caring for the animals and plants, but in the house he was a liability – likely to drop what he was carrying if you spoke to him. He had already cost me a great many bowls.

Junio must have read my thoughts. ‘Don’t worry, master – Father, I should say – Cilla and I will be living very close to you. The lady Julia has arranged for us to have that piece of land so we can build a roundhouse just next to yours. And it won’t be long before we can begin. She’s already had the standing timber removed, and she’s sending a group of land slaves to clear the site today.’

I nodded. ‘She mentioned it to me. Cilla was her personal servant once, she said, and this is to be a sort of dowry, I suppose. It’s very generous of her.’

‘She has never forgotten that you saved her life. And Marcus would be fairly easy to persuade. The land is only forest – he won’t miss that small piece,’ my wife said wryly, adding with a smile. ‘It’s just the kind of gift your patron would approve. Something generous which didn’t cost him anything at all.’

I knew what she meant. I have received a number of such gifts before, including my own roundhouse and young Cilla herself. My patron has made a habit of asking for my help in matters which might otherwise be politically embarrassing, but refuses to ‘insult’ me, as he says, by offering me money for my services. As his business always takes me from my own, it was an insult I could easily have borne.

I laughed. ‘Well, I am grateful that Junio and Cilla will be next door to us. Though we shall have to think about another slave, I suppose. We can’t expect these two to go on serving us – though I suppose that Cilla might go on ahead right now, and try to find a carriage for us at the gates.’ It would have to be outside the walls, of course. Wheeled traffic is not permitted in the city during the hours of daylight, except for military purposes.

Cilla dimpled. ‘That won’t be necessary, master. It’s already done. And here are your messengers to tell you so.’

I glanced up. Threading their way through the assorted throng, dodging round the leather merchant and the live eel stall, were the two red-headed slaves who had presented Junio with his garments earlier. I knew the lads: one of Marcus’s carefully selected ‘pairs’ – servants matched for colouring and height; a piece of conspicuous extravagance with which he dazzled visitors to his country house. Except that these two, being rather young, were no longer properly a pair at all: the younger of them, Minimus, was quickly outstretching his older counterpart.

It was Minimus now who came panting up to me. ‘We have found you a carriage, master . . .’ he began.

‘Waiting for you at the southern gate,’ Maximus chimed in, out of breath after catching up: they often talked like this, one of them completing what the other had begun, as if they’d worked together for so long that they shared a single thought.

‘Thank you.’ I reached into my toga for my purse, and remembered, too late, that I had given it away. It didn’t matter for the carriage, I had money at the house, but I had nothing with me now with which to tip the slaves. ‘I’ll see you at the villa later on,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you something then.’

Maximus looked sideways at his fellow slave, who shrugged expressively, and turned back to me. ‘Didn’t His Excellence tell you, citizen? We are to serve you, while he’s overseas . . .’

‘He says you are losing a couple of your slaves and will be glad of someone . . .’

‘And since he’s closing up the house, he would only have had to sell us otherwise . . .’

‘So we found your carriage for you, and now here we are!’ Minimus finished, with a triumphant air.

I looked at Gwellia, and she looked at me. It seemed that we’d acquired a pair of household slaves, though not perhaps the ones we would have chosen for ourselves. These lads would not be skilled in cookery, or used to cutting wood and the general rough and tumble of a roundhouse life. They were accustomed to the villa with its exquisite ways, and a whole hierarchy of slaves to do the menial tasks. But Marcus had arranged this, and I could not refuse.

‘Very well then, my temporary slaves. You may lead the way,’ I said, and we trooped across the forum and out into the street.

‘There is your carriage, master,’ Maximus began, indicating a hiring coach with leather curtains and a roof, and one of those devices on the wheels which counts the miles.

I hesitated. I prefer to make a bargain for the trip before we start – I am not convinced that these devices, clever as they are, don’t sometimes calculate more miles than they should. Perhaps it was as well that I demurred. A moment later and I would have missed the arrival of a flustered Kurso, perched on Marcus’s land cart by the look of it.

‘M-m-master,’ Kurso stammered, before he had even properly climbed down. ‘I am g-g-glad to see you. Your p-p-patron’s wife sent us. You must come at once.’ He flung himself before me. ‘They have f-f-found something in the g-g-ground that they were clearing for J-Junio and Cilla’s house.’

I went in the land cart with him and Junio, leaving the women and the red-haired boys to follow in the hired coach. We took the short way – not the military road, but a twisting and sometimes vertiginous route down narrow rutted lanes – plunging through mud and overhanging branches at a pace which threatened to shake the axles off the cart and forced us to grip on with all our might.

‘So what exactly is it that the land slaves found?’ I managed, although it was hard to say anything at all when one’s teeth were being jarred together hard at every bounce.

Kurso shook his head. If it was difficult for me, it was almost impossible for him. ‘B-b-bad,’ was all I could make out.

‘What is it, Kurso? Money?’ That was possible. There had been a lot of trouble with Silurian rebels recently, setting on travellers and robbing them. They operated chiefly over to the west, but they were rumoured to have secret hideouts in the woods where they concealed their loot. This might be one of those. If so, it would certainly be ‘bad’. At the very least it would infallibly interrupt our plans and mean that Junio’s house could not be built.

Marcus was a magistrate and honest to a fault. He would demand that the place was closely searched and watched, and that would require a dozen burly guards trampling about our roundhouse day and night. Almost certainly there would be a court case too before he handed the find over to the imperial purse, and since the site was on my doorstep, so to speak, I could expect to be questioned repeatedly myself. In fact I should be grateful that – if there was a cache – it had come to light before Marcus and his family went abroad: it might have been difficult to persuade an unknown magistrate that I had no connection with the stolen goods. I did not want to think about what might have happened then. ‘A hoard of stolen coins?’ I said again.

But Kurso was shaking a determined head. ‘B-b-body,’ he finally got out.

A body. That was different. Curious, of course, but more explicable. There were often corpses in the forest, when the snows withdrew. Wolves, perhaps. Or bears, though they were not so common as they used to be. Perhaps some aged forest dweller had simply starved to death, or a benighted traveller met a frozen end in one of the winter’s more ferocious storms. There were a hundred possibilities. It was unlikely to be anything very sinister, since there had been no news of any local disappearances, but it was still a problem and I could understand why Julia had sent for me at once.

It was appalling luck to come across a corpse in a place where you intend to build a dwelling house. Of course an unknown person of no particular account found dead in the forest in the normal way would not cause much concern. It might either be left exactly where it was, or be taken to the common pit and flung in with the beggars and the criminals. But a body discovered on a house site was quite a different thing. The spirit of the unquiet dead would haunt your doors for ever, if the body was not somehow laid decently to rest.

A different explanation had occurred to Junio. ‘I hope they haven’t disturbed a grave of any sort?’ he said. ‘That would be dreadful at this time of year.’