The Legatus Mystery (18 page)

Poor child, I thought. That bucket was almost as heavy as he was. And, of course, he dared not spill a drop. ‘Junio says you have been helpful here,’ I said, giving him what I hoped was a reassuring smile, and reaching out to take the water pail.

Kurso misunderstood. He was expecting a blow. He dodged backwards, kicked the pail and almost overset the thing again. He stood there against the wall, gazing at me, breathing fast.

Junio rescued us. ‘Well, my master has come back now, Kurso. I think you should go and be about your duties. Thank you for your help. If you have finished with that pattern, master, I’ll make a start at cleaning over here.’ He picked up the brush that Lithputh had provided and turned away, scrubbing the fresh-laid tiles as if the water had been poured out there on purpose.

Even then Kurso looked at me, too terrified to move without permission. I nodded, and he scuttled off in reverse, still bowing, as fast as his legs would take him. (People talk lightly about unfortunates who have learned, from bitter experience, how to run faster backwards than forwards. In Kurso’s case, I realised, it was true.)

I waited until I was sure the boy was gone before I said to Junio, ‘Poor child. But I think you said he may have told you something significant?’

He put down the brush at once. ‘I did, master, and it seems that you were right! About it being Hirsus in the garden here last night. Of course I can’t be absolutely sure – Kurso didn’t see the visitor, and naturally I couldn’t press him too much for details.’

‘It wasn’t Optimus’s wife, at any rate,’ I said. ‘I met her a little while ago, and she is much too short and fat. So what did Kurso say? Be quick and tell me, Junio. Lithputh will be here any minute.’

Junio resumed his scrubbing and took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s like this . . . Kurso was chained up in a store outside one day, waiting to be whipped for something he’d done. They left him there for hours. He thought at first it was done to punish him, but Optimus had come home unexpectedly, and it seems in all the rush they’d genuinely forgotten him. They’d left the door a little bit ajar – fortunately, or he might have suffocated – but no one came near him all the afternoon. But later, when it was getting dark, he heard a noise.’ He paused dramatically.

‘Hirsus?’ I said, anxious to get to the point.

Junio shook his head. ‘I can’t be sure. Kurso himself didn’t know. He only knows he heard a voice – a whispering, he said, and what sounded like the chink of coins. He thought it was his master’s voice he heard, and he was petrified. Decided that Optimus was tired of him, and was in the process of selling him back to some slave-trader. Not that Kurso was happy in the household, but things could be a whole lot worse, of course – if he got sold on to the mines, or something – the more so if they sold him in disgrace. Naturally, he wanted to know what was happening. He couldn’t hear a word of what was said, and he was chained so he couldn’t really move, but he did contrive to shuffle up a bit and got a small glimpse through the door.’

‘And what did he see?’ I said impatiently. ‘Who was with Optimus?’

‘That’s just it,’ Junio exclaimed. ‘It wasn’t Optimus at all. It was Lithputh. And he was talking to a priest. Kurso is absolutely sure of that. It was getting dark, and he was peeping through a crack, but he is absolutely adamant. He’d seen the man before, he said, over at the temple – and anyway he recognised the robes.’ He grinned. ‘Sounds like an Imperial priest to me! Any of the other priests would wear a toga, wouldn’t they, even the High Priest of Jupiter.’

‘I suppose they would!’ I worked it out aloud. ‘Impossible to tell them from any other citizen, in the dark – except perhaps for that flaminial hat?’

My slave looked doubtful. ‘Kurso didn’t say anything about a hat. I got the impression he couldn’t see the face – he would have been kneeling on the floor, remember. But definitely he mentioned “priestly robes”.’

‘Not someone from the Mithraic temple or the Osiris cult?’

Junio shook his head. ‘From the temple opposite, he said. “And in the cloak he looked so slight and slim he might have been mistaken for a woman.” Those were his very words.’

‘It does sound like Hirsus, then,’ I said. ‘No one could take Meritus or Scribonius for a girl. So, what did Kurso do?’

‘Nothing,’ Junio replied. ‘He simply held his breath and tried his hardest not to make a noise and after a while the two men went away. But here’s the thing I thought would interest you. The priest wrapped himself up in a hooded cloak, he says – just like the figure we saw yesterday – and (this is the most extraordinary thing) Lithputh himself went out to the gate, and personally let the caller out. Kurso is sure of that. Lithputh would have a key for the back gate, anyway, of course.’

I stared at him. ‘Where was the doorkeeper?’

‘Who knows? At the front door perhaps? Anyway, Lithputh went back to the house, and Kurso was left to wait again. Nobody came for him for days – by that time he was starving and shivering with cold, and he was almost glad to have his beating and get back to his work.’

‘I wonder what Lithputh and Hirsus were up to?’ I said, putting the last scraps of tile away and collecting up my tools. ‘Who was paying whom for what? And why meet secretly in the dark to do it?’

Junio thought about this for a moment. ‘Hirsus bribing Lithputh, perhaps, to let him come into the house again – like yesterday? Kurso didn’t seem to know – or care, once he knew that they weren’t selling him! He only told me any of the story because I stopped to eat some of that piece of bread and cheese we brought. He looked at it so longingly, I asked if he was ever hungry. And then it all came out – how he’d been locked up and starved for days.’

All this talk of bread and cheese reminded me that it was now long past midday and I had not eaten anything myself. The floor was almost finished now – only those last few tiles that I’d put in remained to be cleaned off, and that could not be done until they’d set, so I asked Junio to pass me the remnants of the food.

He did so, rather sheepishly – there was not a great deal left. (‘The poor boy looked so ravenous, master,’ Junio said apologetically, ‘and I thought that you’d be eating with the priests.’)

I had to wait while the mortar dried, so I ate my unexpectedly frugal meal, leaving Junio to load up our things and bring the handcart round to the front door. I didn’t offer to help him – that would teach him to give away my lunch! – and I was just finishing the last few crumbs of cheese when Lithputh came back into the room. He looked displeased to see me squatting there.

‘Thtill here, thitithen? I underthtood from your thlave that you had finished?’ He looked at the floor. ‘I thuppothe the work ith thatithfactory – it didn’t theem to take you very long. You were away for half the morning, too, the doorman tellth me. I hope you don’t ecthpect my mathter to pay you the prithe that he agreed – when he provided half the labour and you’re thimply thitting there?’

‘I agreed to do the job within a day,’ I said, blessing Gwellia’s astuteness. ‘And I’ve completed it in less. If anything, I should increase the price.’

Lithputh looked singularly unimpressed by this, and I could see that I was in for a long dispute before I saw my money. I was about to argue – my slave’s work is mine to sell – when it occurred to me that Lithputh might have an interest in seeing me paid less. As steward of the purse, he would doubtless have the opportunity to pocket some of the difference himself.

Perhaps that’s what made me confront him then and there, and say, conversationally, ‘Perhaps we could ask the temple to arbitrate between us? It was they who summoned me away, and I understand that you are friendly with one of the Imperial priests?’

I was aware of the door behind him opening, but I did not glance towards it. If Lithputh had anything to say, I was only too glad for Junio to witness it – especially if Lithputh didn’t know that he was there.

Lithputh didn’t have anything to say. He stood there silent, looking shocked.

‘Well?’ I urged him. ‘Isn’t that the case? Hirsus the priest has been here, more than once?’

It wasn’t Junio at the door, I realised. It was Kurso, and if Lithputh had not been so intent on me, he too would have heard that sharp intake of breath. But the Phrygian steward was too transfixed by my words to be aware of anything else.

‘Hirthuth!’ he exclaimed, with evident astonishment. ‘How did you come to hear of that? Did one of the houthhold tell you? Or have you been thpeaking to the prietht himthelf?’

‘I did need to hear from anyone. I have the testimony of my own two eyes. I saw him leaving yesterday, shortly after I left here myself.’ I said this thinking to reassure Kurso, but when I glanced towards the door the boy had disappeared. Lithputh was still staring at me. I went on, ‘And since I didn’t see him in the public rooms, I deduced the priest had been entertained here privately.’ It sounded a bit lame, when I said it, but the effect on Lithputh was remarkable.

‘Ah!’ he said. His manner had changed abruptly, and he almost squirmed. ‘Well then, I thuppothe you’ll have to know . . . It’th nothing of importanth, really – just a buthineth matter between Hirthuth and my mathter.’

‘What kind of business?’ I demanded. I was genuinely curious. What did a miserly ex-legionary like Optimus Honorius want with an assistant Imperial priest and one-time slave?

Lithputh flushed and looked more embarrassed than ever. ‘That I can’t tell you, thitithen. If I knew the anthwer, which I don’t, my lipth would thtill be thealed. I am a private thteward, after all.’

‘I’ll speak to Optimus about it,’ I said, and hoped it sounded like a threat. ‘When I talk to him about the fees, perhaps? I shan’t leave here until that matter is resolved.’

‘Ah, ath to that,’ Lithputh began. He sounded suddenly conciliatory, as I’d hoped he might. ‘My mathter ithn’t here at prethent, but ath thoon ath he comth back I’ll thend it after you. I’m thure we can—’

But what we could have done, I never learned. At that moment Junio burst into the room.

‘Master,’ he said, without waiting for permission. ‘Can I have a word?’ He glanced at Lithputh. ‘For your ears alone, citizen pavement-maker. It may concern your patron . . .’

Lithputh sniffed, and looked affronted, but he left the room.

I turned to Junio. ‘Bad news from Marcus? You look terrified!’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing to do with Marcus. I said that because I wanted to speak to you alone. Master, I think you’d better leave. The front way, too, as quickly as you can. There’s a crowd of people out there, massing at the back – quite a little group of them, all shouting and calling on the gods. The mood is getting ugly: some of them are armed with sticks and stones. I don’t know what’s provoked this, master, but something clearly has. I heard them shouting at the doorman. They know you’re in here – it’s you they’re looking for.’ He gulped. ‘It’s something to do with the problems at the temple. You’ve brought down divine wrath upon the town, they say – and only your death will satisfy the gods.’

An armed mob! Looking for me!

For the second time that day I felt my blood run cold. I had been alarmed by the seemingly supernatural events I’d seen, but this was a far more pressing threat. I have seen what angry crowds can do. Even the Roman authorities are afraid of riots – especially religious ones. See how they persecute the Druids. And the founder of the Christians was put to death – though the provincial governor was reluctant to do it, if the accounts are true – precisely at the demand of an angry mob like this.

Of course, I was a Roman citizen, which helped – but if the rabble got hold of me, dressed as I was in working clothes, I didn’t suppose they would stop to ask questions. Even if I survived their sticks and stones, and claimed my rights, they would probably haul me to the authorities and demand a trial on a charge of sacrilegious treason. And if that happened, not even Marcus or Pertinax could save me – all I could do was appeal to the Emperor, whose temple I had accidentally desecrated! Commodus thinks he’s Hercules and will not tolerate any slight to his divinity: men who do not show appropriate respect to an Imperial shrine often end up as fodder for the arena beasts. I could face worse vengeance than the mob’s.

But they had to catch me first. Under Roman law there can be no trial without the accused’s being present. If only I could smuggle myself out of the house and get away! I thought of appealing to Lithputh for help, but that was no use. I had seriously unsettled him and I suspected he would cheerfully betray me to the crowd.

‘Do something, master,’ Junio urged.

But what?

In the end I got away in the handcart. It was not the most comfortable journey of my life, huddled on a pile of broken tiles and cowering under a piece of filthy sacking, and it was all Junio could do to push my weight, but it was the only solution I could think of.

It was a near thing, even then. Junio had the cart at the front door, where he had been loading it in full view of passers-by, and we had to choose a moment when the front street was clear for me to slip out and clamber on. As I did so, someone came out of the potter’s shop next door and Junio threw the cloth over me just in time. I must have made a grotesque-looking heap, but fortunately no one paid any attention to the slave – whom they had previously seen innocently loading tiles – pushing his laden cart away.

He pushed me halfway across the town. I swear I felt every carriage rut and cobble, and by the time he paused in a little lane behind the market to let me climb painfully down, I was so shaken and bruised that I was beginning to wish I’d taken my chance and tried to talk my way out of the mob.

I said so to Junio, as I stood in a disused doorway picking pieces of tile out of myself and trying to shake the stone dust from my hair. ‘I suppose I brought this on myself by talking to that crowd at the temple gates. Some of them followed me to Optimus’s house. I might have known they wouldn’t go away. They’d heard rumours from somewhere of strange things at the temple, it had all got hugely exaggerated, and I suppose they think I know more than I admitted to. Perhaps if I’d just tried to talk to them . . .’