The Germanicus Mosaic (4 page)

‘You think he killed a senior officer?’ I said. ‘Surely not! That would be treachery.’ I was not debating a moral point; that sort of crime carried an automatic death penalty, and Crassus had been very much alive, at least until recently.

Marcus laughed. ‘I don’t suppose he did it, in fact. The death was not especially suspicious, the man just suddenly fell ill one night and died. There are always unexpected deaths, through infections or poor food. There were rumours, but Germanicus had witnesses to say he was miles away that night, and he gained his centurion’s baton. But whispers persisted among the company. At least, so Aulus tells me.’

‘So what are you suggesting? That somebody believed the story and killed Crassus for revenge?’

‘No. In that case someone would have stabbed him years ago – and it is probably nothing but rumour, anyway. If there had been any real suspicion he would have been executed then and there. But it gives some indication of the man. People believed it of him. And he may have old enemies, or old confederates, in the army still. Aulus informs me that twice in the last few weeks armed soldiers have come to the villa at night and Germanicus has gone out to meet them – having first ordered his gatekeeper away on an errand.’

That was seriously bad news. Even I knew that sections of the army wanted to overthrow the emperor and instate the legionary legate, Priscus, in his stead, while other sections favoured the governor, Pertinax, for the imperial crown. The complication, from my point of view, was that these two treasonable alternatives were not politically equal. Marcus was the governor’s personal representative. He rose or fell with Pertinax. No wonder he was concerned about possible political conspiracy.

‘How do you know this?’ I asked, warily. If he was right I stood a good chance of ending up in the hypocaust myself.

‘Aulus had the presence of mind to keep watch, and saw them. One man came each time, and Germanicus went out and was whispering to each of them in the lane. But here is Aulus, he can tell you himself.’

Aulus was unwilling. He was a great, coarse, lumbering bear of a man with a leering manner, shifting eyes and a nervous tongue which licked out and moistened his lips as he spoke. Serving two masters is always a dangerous task, but he told his story at last, glancing occasionally around him in case Andretha was lurking in the shadows. In essence, though, it was precisely as Marcus had said. He could add nothing, although he hedged the story round with excuses: it had been too dark to see in detail, and he had been too far away to hear. At least two visits, though, he was certain of that. One three days before the procession, and one a week or two earlier. A centurion on both occasions. He was unable to say if it was the same man.

About the disappearance of Crassus, though, he was adamant. It was exactly as Andretha had reported, and he knew absolutely nothing more about it. By the time Marcus let him go, Aulus was sweating.

‘He’s hiding something,’ Marcus said. ‘But we’ll get the truth out of him. By flogging if necessary.’

I shook my head. ‘I doubt it, excellence. By all means interview the household, but I don’t believe flogging will help. No one saw this, except the murderer himself, and he won’t tell you. Perhaps we should be asking in the town? Looking for someone who saw Crassus after the procession?’

Marcus frowned. ‘Well, perhaps. But remember, I expect discretion.’

I sighed. The implications of that did not escape me. Marcus had no intention of demeaning himself by interrogating the townspeople at random. He expected me to do that, when I had finished here. In the meantime precious time would be passing.

‘There may be someone who saw Daedalus, too. He is a missing slave, after all.’

That roused him. A runaway slave is a serious matter. ‘You think he did it? You know the man, you were in this household for weeks.’

I laughed, shortly. ‘I hardly knew him. I was in the librarium. A man who works for Crassus has little time for gossiping.’

‘But you knew his reputation?’

I did. Crassus’ favourite slave; clever, shrewd, talented – he had a gift for mimicry which made him a favourite for ‘fashionable’ entertainments – but ambitious too. ‘He could have done it. He is calculating enough. But he had been promised his freedom. He may even have received it – it is not unknown for men to free their slaves at the festival, as a sort of sacrifice.’

‘And then he turned on his ex-master? It is hard to see why, although Andretha might hope so. If Crassus was killed by a free man, it changes everything.’

‘Why else would he disappear?’

Marcus raised his eyebrows, and voiced what both of us had been thinking. ‘Suppose Germanicus threatened to refuse him, after all? Changed his mind about manumission?’

‘And Daedalus killed him in a fury? Murder in the heat of the moment, that I can understand. But why bring the body back? And how? Dragging a corpse for miles is to invite discovery, and anyway they could not have returned here before the others. Crassus was in the procession. He would have had to wait till the end of the sacrifices, and they had no transport. The servants had the farm cart, and you heard Andretha – Crassus intended to hire horses when he had finished feasting.’

‘He didn’t do that,’ Marcus put in. ‘The aediles have already made enquiries. No one hired a horse, or a carriage. There were none free to hire immediately after the procession. He and Daedalus would have been on foot – unless they stole a nag. Or borrowed one. There was some itinerant pilgrim who passed this way on a mule, but they didn’t hire that either, he was seen trotting back with it long before the festival was over. No thefts have been reported.’

‘In any case,’ I said, ‘a man who wanted to hide a corpse could hardly have risked stealing a horse as well. He’d have had half the countryside after him. No, I fear you are right. We must try to trace those armed soldiers. But – let us listen to the household first. There may be something we can glean from them.’

But no one – not the lute player, not the cooks, not the house-slaves or the dancing girls – had anything to add to the story we had heard already. Crassus set out early for the procession with Daedalus and had insisted on walking the three or four miles to Glevum because the day was fine and he intended feasting afterwards. It sounded daunting to me, walking miles in full armour and then taking part in a procession, but presumably it was nothing to an old soldier trained to march all day carrying his entire kit.

The servants had all travelled to Glevum together on the farm cart, watched the procession, and come home the same way, and no one had seen or heard anything of Crassus until the two men who stoked the hypocaust went down at midday to relight the furnace.

Marcus questioned them harshly, but they were unshakable. They had gone to the feast with the others and, having been granted a holiday from stoking, had spent the afternoon chopping logs for the extra woodpile in full view of the slaves carrying water and tending the inner gardens. The stoke-hole was round at the side of the villa and, with the furnaces out, no one had been near it. Equally, no one could have got to it from outside without being seen.

‘So, we are back to politics,’ Marcus said, over the bowl of stew and fish sauce which the kitchen had finally produced. ‘It seems nobody in the household did it. Or all of them did.’ He looked at me enquiringly.

I said nothing. I was trying to spoon up my stew without actually swallowing any of the fish sauce – that horrible fermented stuff with anchovies in it that the Romans seem to put on everything. Furthermore, I was trying to do so without Marcus noticing. I gave him a wan smile.

Marcus said languidly, ‘Or perhaps Crassus’ death is just some punishment by the gods. It was the feast of Mars after all.’ He finished his own stew and pushed the plate away. ‘Well, I’ll leave it to you, Libertus. I’ve done all I can here. Send to me, if you discover anything. I suppose we must allow Andretha to make arrangements for the funeral procession, so we will meet in three days, at least. In the meantime, I’ll ask at the guardroom, and see if there is any information about those two soldiers. They must have been missed, they were out well after curfew. And now, I must get back to Glevum. My carriage driver will be anxious for his supper.’

I lay awake for a long time, thinking. Andretha had shown me to a guest bedroom – a proper Roman bed with a stuffed mattress supported on a webbed wood frame – but for all the fine woollen blankets I slept less soundly than I might have done on my own humble pile of reeds and rags. This murder worried me. Not that I mourned Crassus particularly, but I dislike unsolved puzzles. Why bring the body back where it was certain to be found? And how? It seemed an impossible feat. And so deliberate, as though it meant something. Assuming, I thought drowsily, that Crassus hadn’t crept home unnoticed and committed suicide by stuffing his own head into the furnace. Or drunk himself stupid, stumbled into the stoke room and died of inhaling smoke.

And then tucked himself tidily into the furnace, perhaps? Besides, how would he have got past the villa gates? A stocky man in full military uniform, complete with shield, spear, helmet and mask, is not easy to miss, especially when the whole household is on the lookout for him. And ten times more so if he is drunk. No, however he had died, someone else had put him in the furnace.

Tired as I was, that jolted me awake. How
had
he died? You can’t just stuff a healthy man into a fire and expect him obligingly to stay there. Yet there were no stab wounds on the body, and the charred skull bore no signs of a blow. Drink perhaps, to render him unconscious? Or poison? That was more likely; Crassus had a strong head for drink. In that case a woman might have done it. It would take a strong man to carry that weight any distance, but even a woman could have managed to hoist the top half of Crassus into the furnace, if he were already lying lifeless at her feet. But (I kept coming back to the same question) why do it at all? His sword was at hand. Even if the man was merely unconscious, why not simply slit his throat and run?

If I knew the answer to that, I thought, I would have the key to everything. And what about those confounded soldiers?

I slept fitfully at last, dreaming of furnaces.

When I awoke, morning was already streaming through Crassus’ smart glass windows, the bluish green of their light criss-crossed on the bedcovers by the shadow of the supporting wooden grills. An interesting pattern for a mosaic, I had time to think to myself, before a timid voice addressed me.

‘You are awake, citizen? Andretha bade me bring you these.’

It was a young house-slave bearing a wooden carrying-board. I had noticed him when I was here laying the librarium mosaic, a slight, dark-haired youth with dandified manners and a perpetually hunted look. He had interested me then, with his pale skin, anxious brown eyes, and general air of having learned to run backwards more quickly than forwards, but (since a pavement maker has little time for idle gossip, especially when he is working for Crassus in a hurry) I had never spoken to him until the interview yesterday with Marcus. For a moment I could not speak to him even now. I was too busy goggling at the array of toilet accessories laid out on his tray.

A phial of perfumed oil for cleansing, a fine curved strigil to scrape it off with, and even a sponge-stick for more private ablutions, in case I should have omitted to bring my own and wished to visit the latrine. And a fine bowl of rainwater, with fresh blossom floating in it, so that I could rinse my skin.

I grinned. All this luxury and a formal title, too! Andretha was certainly nervous. When I was working at the villa, walking the weary miles to and fro with my twist of bread and cheese in my pouch, I was lucky to get a grunt and permission to rinse the stone-dust off in the garden water-butt.

Now, though, I was no longer a simple craftsman. I was ‘citizen’, an associate of Marcus, in a toga and an imperial gig, and Andretha must be falling over himself to repair the damage. I suspected he had even troubled to take the chill off the rainwater. I trailed a finger in its cool depths.

The slaveboy misinterpreted the gesture and hastened an apology. ‘I am sorry, citizen. We did not like to . . .’ He trailed off.

Light the boiler for the bathhouse, he meant. It had not occurred to me. Even in my slave days I had never lived in a villa grand enough to have its own bathhouse. But of course Crassus had one. It was the kind of display of wealth and Romanness which he particularly enjoyed – and which, since he was ambitious, he probably needed. A citizen who possesses property in excess of 400,000 sesterces is, of course, eligible for election to the ranks of the
equites
and Crassus would have loved to become a knight. A display of expensive possessions was a first step on that ladder.

Hence the famous librarium pavement, of course, and the inlaid table I had seen in the atrium. That alone must have been worth a chief’s ransom. It probably
was
a chief’s ransom. After what Marcus had said about Crassus’ reputation in the army, it was not hard to form a shrewd suspicion about how the centurion had amassed his wealth. Strictly illegal of course – serving officers are not permitted to take private bribes – but then, technically the inlaid table was probably not a bribe at all, but a ‘gift’. With a sword at their throats it is astonishing how generous people can suddenly feel, especially if Germanicus’ reputation for ruthlessness had gone before him.

I realised that the slaveboy was still staring at me, like a nervous mouse.

‘Of course you could not stoke the furnace, in the circumstances,’ I said lazily, as if a luxurious bodily dip in hot and cold water was a normal daily occurrence for me. ‘In any case, I would like to look at the stokehouse again, and see the body before it is moved. There are one or two little details I would like to confirm.’

The boy shook his head apologetically. ‘It is too late, citizen. Andretha has had the body brought into the house, to be anointed and washed for the funeral.’

That news brought me out of bed abruptly. ‘Already?’