A Pattern of Blood (22 page)

The slave master himself, bronzed and prosperous-looking in a smart cloak and green tunic, was standing on a wooden chest nearby and vaunting the virtues of his remaining wares, while one or two townspeople showed a desultory interest, feeling the muscles of the younger men and looking at their teeth. No one wants a servant with dental problems.

The slave master saw me coming and turned his attention to me. ‘Strong slaves for sale, citizen. Nice little slave girl, now? Guaranteed free from diseases. One owner from birth.’

I shook my head. I have always hated slave markets. I have been on the wrong side of one myself.

He smiled a crooked smile at me. Several of his teeth were missing. ‘She’s young, she’s willing. No tendencies to lust, excessive religion or public spectacles.’ These latter were those defects in a slave which a trader was bound by law to disclose to any prospective purchaser.

The girl smiled at me hopefully. Perhaps I had a kinder face than many, or perhaps it was simply because Junio looked well fed. I shook my head again and her face fell.

The slave trader did not give up. ‘Only for sale because her master died. Come on, citizen.’ He named a price. ‘I shall be robbing myself.’

One of the muscle pinchers was beguiled by the offer. He went over and tested the girl for plumpness, and then, apparently satisfied, motioned to the slave vendor, who came down from his makeshift platform. I saw silver coins change hands, together with the certificate of ownership. The girl was unshackled from her comrades by the guard, and handed to her purchaser by the chain around her neck. He, I was encouraged to see, ordered the fetters removed before he led her away.

I took advantage of this break in proceedings to approach the slave trader and ask him my questions about Gwellia. Did he know of a slaver called Bethius who had sold a dark-haired Celtic woman in this market a year or so before? It occurred to me as I asked the question how hopeless the search appeared.

It was not the same man as I had spoken to on my previous visit, and I was not hopeful of the result, but he looked at me shrewdly. ‘What did she look like, this woman?’

I told him, as best I could. I realised that I could not even be sure that my wife’s hair was not grey, after so many years.

‘You want a dark-haired Celt, I can get you one, citizen. I have good contacts in the trade.’

I made it clear that it was this woman in particular that I sought.

He thought about it for a little while, and then his face brightened. ‘Of course,’ he said, eyeing my purse reflectively, ‘I cannot be certain.’

I blessed the gods that I had not been obliged to bribe information from the fuller’s men. I slipped him what money I had left and his memory, thus oiled, began to function less rustily.

‘Well, citizen, you’ve come to the right place. I am Bethius, as it chances. But the woman you are looking for . . . I see so many slaves.’

‘It is an unusual name,’ I pleaded, ‘Gwellia. And she was beautiful.’ I did not dare to use the present tense.

He shook his head. ‘I could not swear to it. There was a slave, about the age you mention. She had a young man for sale with her, as I recall. Sold them together to some wool trader from the north. Near Eboracum, I think. He wanted an attendant for his mother. Or perhaps it was his wife. Or was that the man who bought the slaves from Gaul? I remember he paid me well. No, I think it was the Celt. But of course, it may not be the woman that you seek at all.’

It was, however, more than I had looked for. Gwellia, alive, in Eboracum? It was possible. I thanked the man and turned to move away.

He called after me. ‘Any time you want a slave, citizen, you come to me. Best value in the Empire. Gauls, Picts, Greeks, Armenians, Numidians – you name it, I have them all. Or if you want to sell that boy of yours, I can offer you a good price: British slaves are highly prized among the Belgic tribes.’

I walked away more quickly to hide my distaste. The fellow was only trying to be helpful: many people would have been glad of such an offer. I turned to Junio and saw that he was glancing at me nervously.

‘Don’t preen yourself that you are going to Belgium,’ I told him gruffly. ‘After all the trouble I have taken to train you to be half useful with mosaics. Besides, who else could make spiced mead the way you do?’

Junio’s face split into a joyous grin. ‘Do you want me to be useful now, and ask a few questions about this soothsayer of yours?’ He tried to sound his normal impudent self, but he could not keep the emotion from his voice.

I nodded. ‘Be quick about it then. Marcus will be pacing the study for us by now.’

But no one, not the pie sellers or the fishmongers or the tinsmiths or even the street musicians could give us any news of her, although all of them had regular selling pitches nearby. They knew her, of course, or at least they knew of her – forever accosting travellers and offering to read their palms or throw the dice for them. Obviously a woman of many talents.

It was the miller under the awning, leading his wretched horse in melancholy circles around his grinding-stone while his slave poured coarse grain into the vat above, who gave us the only real indication. He knew the woman, he said; she often stopped by the quern at nightfall to gather up the last sweepings of flour from the bottom stone. He let her have them – the leavings were too full of stone grit for ordinary sale.

I could not resist a grin. As it is there are always little particles of stone in market-milled flour, which wear down the teeth and give the baker’s bread a strange, crunchy texture. That was one reason why I generally preferred my oatcakes, with the grain ground painstakingly at someone’s home, by hand. The miller saw my smile.

‘Call me superstitious if you like, citizen, but I would never cross a soothsayer, especially that one. Halfway to sorceress she was, for all that it is forbidden by the law. If I had turned her away she’d have put a curse on my horse, more than likely, or given me the evil eye. Though there were those who came to her, all the same. I have seen purple-stripers talk to her in secret before now.’

‘In secret?’ I demanded. ‘It hardly seems secret if you knew of it.’

He smiled. ‘She makes a bed sometimes in the stable where I stall the horse – I told you, I did not like to turn her away. It is not much of a shelter, just an open space under a slanting roof, but there is enough straw and room in there for a bed and the shelter will keep the rain off, if not the wind. I have seen one of them come there.’

‘She makes her home in your stable?’

‘Not all the time, citizen. Only when there are storms. In finer weather she sleeps in a tumbledown hovel just outside the walls. She can light a fire there and cook her gritty flour, and anything else she manages to beg from the market – spoiled fruit and old meat. She has other “regulars” like me.’

I nodded. Men may scoff at the idea of ‘powers’, but they will seldom cross the woman who claims to have them. No doubt her fire, too, came from a friendly baker’s, or the superstitious owner of a takeaway cooked food stall who let her carry home a few live coals in a container. ‘Outside the walls, you say?’

‘Some way beyond the Verulamium Gate, citizen, across the bridge. There is a little valley with a dribble of a stream. The guards at the gate will indicate the way. No doubt they saw the woman come in and go out often enough. The place used, I think, to be a tiler’s kiln, but it was built in a hurry to serve the town demand, and it was poorly sited. The valley flooded every time it rained, and the tile-makers soon abandoned it.’

I looked at Junio and grimaced. There was no possibility of taking the time to make the expedition now. The Verulamium Gate was on the other side of town, and Marcus would be impatient enough already. ‘We shall have to leave our visit to another day,’ I said. ‘But thank you for your information, miller.’ I only wished I had a few
asses
left, so that my thanks could take a more tangible form.

I wished it even more strongly when I heard him say, quite loudly, to his bedraggled slave as we left, ‘Well, I’m disappointed. I thought he was a decent sort of fellow, but he turned out to be another typical Celtic upstart. They are all the same. So proud of their new togas and precious Roman citizenship that they cannot spare even the smallest bronze coin for one of their old countrymen, even when he’s doing his best to help. That’s the last time I ever offer information to anyone, without seeing the colour of his money first.’

I quickened my pace and hurried all the way back to the house. The lament, I noticed as soon as we approached the gates, was going on undiminished.

Marcus was not as irritated as I had feared. On the contrary, when I presented myself in the atrium, hot and flustered after scampering back from the market with most uncitizenly haste, he was looking singularly pleased with himself. He did not even seem interested in hearing the explanations I had been carefully preparing all the way.

He had been lunching lightly on bread, fruit and cheese, laid out on the same elaborate tray from which he had been served earlier, while his personal slave stood by, obviously acting as taster. The sight of the meal made my mouth water, but at my approach Marcus pushed the tray aside, motioned to the slave to remove it and then turned his attention to me.

I got as far as, ‘Serious news, master. Junio and I have discovered . . .’ when he waved his hand in airy dismissal.

‘I am sure that you have been as diligent as ever, old friend,’ he said, with the kind of smile which told me that, whatever news I brought him, I had been wasting my time. ‘But since the reading of the will, matters have altered here. You have heard about my appointment as Julia’s sponsor, no doubt?’

I murmured something complimentary.

‘Quintus mentioned it to me, in his letter. Afraid something would happen to him, and didn’t want his wife left to the mercies of Flavius in the courts. He thought of appointing Sollers as her protector, at one time, but a mere citizen, even a Greek one, would find it hard to match a purple-striper if it came to persuading a court.’

I nodded. Flavius would have to be a brave man to cross a woman who had Marcus as her legal protector. ‘You will do it splendidly, Excellence.’

‘Yes, I will.’ There was no false modesty about Marcus. ‘And I was right about Lupus as well. New evidence has come to light that puts the matter beyond doubt. Send that slave of yours to fetch Mutuus: he is waiting in the study. I think you should hear this for yourself.’

I turned to speak to Junio, whom I had posted at the door, but I was too late. He had obviously been listening, because he had disappeared before I had time to utter a word.

Marcus was enjoying himself. He refused to be drawn on what this ‘new evidence’ was. ‘Wait and see,’ was all he would say. He did, however, consent to listen to my news, which he received with a kind of smug dismay. ‘Maximilian, eh? You said that there was something suspicious about him.’ He vouchsafed this consolation in the tones of a man offering a bone to a hunting dog who has lost a rabbit. ‘Plotting to have his father robbed. We could have had him sentenced for that.’

‘Could have had him sentenced? Why the past tense, Marcus?’ It was not an idle question. As the governor’s representative, he understood the finer points of law better than I did.

He gave me a forgiving smile. ‘Unfortunately, with Quintus dead, there is no chance of a civil case. There is no injured party to bring one, and there must be someone to accuse him.’

I said, doubtfully, ‘Surely you could bring a criminal case yourself? As Julia’s representative?’

‘I could, but there is a chance that I would lose on technicalities, and that would be bad for my authority. Quintus didn’t raise a search for his attackers at once, so he clearly didn’t intend to sue – and so on. Then, Maximilian would presumably bring this old woman to testify that he did not intend violence, so the punishment would only be a fine. And that, of course, would be a further complication.’

The appointment as Julia’s legal spokesman was clearly going to his head. He had adopted his best magisterial manner to deliver this pronouncement. I asked dutifully, ‘A complication? Why is that?’

‘Maximilian would have to pay damages to his victim’s estate. But most of that estate is now Maximilian’s own, which he could presumably use to pay with. That anomaly would bring the whole question of the will before the
praetor
, and once that happened, the entire testament could be declared invalid. I’m sure you can deduce what that would mean.’

Anyone could. Once a
querela
was entered against a will, no one was likely to profit except the imperial coffers. Better for the sake of Julia, Sollers, debtors and even pavement-makers to leave matters exactly as they were.

He smiled grimly. ‘Of course, I do not intend to let Maximilian escape entirely. I shall make sure he knows that I am aware of his guilt, and might raise a prosecution at any time. That should ensure that he is properly grateful towards me. A loyal ally in Corinium would be a useful tool.’

‘You do not feel, Excellence, that he may be dangerous? He might have killed Quintus. A man who hatches one plot against his father might well propose another.’

‘I might have thought so myself if it were not for what I heard this afternoon. But here is the man himself.’ He gestured towards the door, where Junio had just reappeared, accompanying an elegant figure.

It was Mutuus, although for a moment I hardly recognised him. Gone were the ochre tunic and the thonged sandals. The secretary was dazzling in red leather shoes and a fine woollen robe which put my toga to shame. Of course he had now regained his status. He would resume his full Roman name, too, though I would never think of him as anything but Mutuus.

‘So,’ I said, when the formalities were over, ‘you have resumed your former status?’

‘Not precisely my former status, citizen.’ The pedantic Latin sounded better coming from a young man who dressed to match it. Mutuus had somehow acquired an air of intellectual distinction. No wonder Julia had found him attractive. Even Marcus was looking at him appreciatively, although my patron’s taste, unlike that of many Romans, had always been almost exclusively for females. Like Julia, for instance.