The Legatus Mystery (20 page)

‘We’ve found out where the pavement-maker is. Or rather where he was. A boy has just turned up here with a cart – says he met the fellow in the town, and was promised money if he wheeled it here. He described the place, an alleyway behind the market stalls. I’ve sent the others down there to search. Our pavement-maker can’t have gone far; the lad was swift. I gave him a few
quadrans
for his pains.’ He smirked.

It was a travesty. I had already paid, and – far from being quick – there was time to have wheeled the cart round the city twice! But the boy’s indolence had turned out usefully for me.

The bigger man nodded. ‘Then I might as well go down to the market, too. You stay here for a bit, in case, but it doesn’t sound as if our man is coming here.’ To my amazement, he turned and left the room. Gwellia’s trick seemed to have succeeded. Only the red-headed man was left, and he was nothing like as threatening.

It was tempting to make a run for it, but he now stationed himself at the partition door from where he was attempting to watch both us and the street. Gwellia caught my eye and I subsided back onto the stool. Better to wait quietly and hope for my transport to arrive.

I waited, not daring to breathe, for what seemed eternity. At any moment, I was sure, my guard would come and take a closer look at me. He did glance towards me once or twice, as if suspicious, but nothing happened and in the end he went out to the street. For a long moment nothing went on happening.

Then all at once he reappeared around the partition. He came towards me, dangerously near. I closed my eyes, expecting the worst. His freckled hand fell on my shoulder and I winced.

‘The litter’s outside, citizen,’ he bellowed in my astonished ear. ‘Litter! Outside! Understand?’

I nodded, too shaken to speak.

The man didn’t move.

‘What now?’ I wondered, privately, and the realisation dawned. I was supposed to be a wealthy Roman citizen! I fished out my purse and offered him a coin. That was an embarrassment – I had only a bronze
as
or two about me, beyond the litter-hire, but I gave him one and he took it grudgingly.

‘Blind as well as deaf,’ I heard him mutter, and then he moved aside. He really was about to let me leave! I could hardly believe my good fortune.

He watched me sourly as I shuffled to the door, still in my role of aged citizen. The litter was filling up the lane outside, and the crowd was gone. I could have howled with relief. ‘The high priest’s house!’ I muttered to the slaves, as they lowered the litter and I climbed quickly on.

Too quickly? From the inner doorway of the shop my would-be captor could be still watching me. Had my sudden sprightliness alerted him? I was too afraid to glance behind me as my bearers hoisted me.

‘And be quick about it,’ I ordered, and they set off at a run. My makeshift hood, made from the loose end of my toga, dropped backwards as we went, revealing me more clearly.

But no one came lumbering after us. No shouts of ‘Hey you, come back!’ I closed my eyes and prayed to all the gods – Roman and Celtic – I had ever known.

If we could only reach the corner, I was safe, at least for now. Even if he came after me he’d never catch me then: he was fat and slow and my bearers were fast – and hoping to be generously paid. The litter lurched and swayed like a coracle in a storm, but I held on grimly for my life until we were safely out of sight around the bend.

As soon as we were out of sight I sat back heavily. I was safe – for the moment, anyway! But even as I felt relief wash over me, I knew that I could not really afford to relax for an instant.

If Junio was right, my pursuers would not give up easily. They were probably already on my trail. And if they found me . . .! I shuddered. Think, foolish pavement-maker, think!

I tried. It was not easy while struggling to keep my balance on a wildly rocking litter, but I tried to put my fear aside and to think rationally about the day’s events. While I was in the workshop I had been too terrified to give a moment’s consideration to anything beyond getting out of there, but now that I turned my mind to it I began to recognise for the first time the full horror of my predicament. I was effectively a fugitive. Half the town was looking for me and even the faint protection of my toga was no longer a disguise. I could not go home, there was nowhere in the city I could hide for long, and the town gates would certainly be watched. Nowhere was safe. What was I to do?

I was concerned about Gwellia, too – and guilty. In making my escape as I did, I had left her at the mercy of that red-headed idiot with the stick. I could only hope that he would think a female slave too trivial to waste his time upon. Or, since he was convinced I was an evil-bringer, perhaps he’d be too concerned with chasing me! I sent up a prayer to whatever gods there were that – for whatever reason – the mob would not go back to the workshop and mistreat my poor ex-wife. But I wasn’t confident. Misery darkened my despair. She deserved better of me – without her quick thinking I would never have escaped. My own brain seemed to have deserted me entirely this afternoon.

It certainly had. Dear Mercury! I sat up suddenly – so suddenly that I almost fell off my perch. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? The stories which that red-haired man had told! All those tales about signs and omens! Most of the information was correct! He was not just repeating wild imaginings, like the mob I’d spoken to this afternoon. He’d known about the corpse, the blood – the ‘water turning red’. So where on earth had the information come from?

Not from the temple, surely? Everyone there had been sworn to secrecy by the high priest himself – even Trinunculus had tried to be discreet! But – I had to face it – how else could the rumour possibly have spread? No one outside, except myself and Junio, had any inkling of the truth. Not even Marcus could have known all of this morning’s happenings.

And there was something else. If the crowd were looking for somebody to blame, what had possessed them to alight on me? Why not Scribonius, for example? He seemed a much more likely candidate. He was an Icenian – and there was that legend of a curse. Or the visiting legate perhaps, as Gwellia had suggested?

Because the augurers had told them it was me. That’s what the ruffian had said. I hadn’t taken too much notice at the time – but suppose that it was true? Even if the augurers had said nothing of the kind, surely the whisper must have started at the temple? It was not the kind of thing the populace would make up by themselves – most of them had never heard of me. This was not like rumours of Fabius Marcellus’s visit, which had spread through the town like a bakery fire. Or was it? That had become common knowledge, too, when the messenger had come only to Marcus and the priests.

If there was someone deliberately fomenting this, it would explain everything. Someone within the temple! Or someone with access to its dealings. I found myself shaking my head in disbelief. Everything pointed in that direction, and the more I thought about it, the more certain I became. This outcry against me was no accident. Someone was trying to frighten me off – or worse. I had made an enemy somewhere at the shrine.

Yet here I was, being conveyed of my own free will back in that direction. The realisation gave me a nasty shock. Unlike the Christians in the arena, who are said to actively embrace their fate, I have no taste for martyrdom. Yet where else could I go? It was getting late by now, and the mob were looking for me in the streets – and no doubt had watchers waiting at the gates.

We had reached the centre of the town by now, and I struggled to sit up a little more, ready to call to the bearers and have them set me down. I would stop outside the forum after all. With a little luck I could make it to Marcus’s apartment, over the wine-shop opposite. It was a risk, but it was not very far away, and if I was quick about it I should be safe from any rabble there.

But as we rounded the last corner into the central square, we met a scene that made my stomach churn.

A small crowd had gathered outside the fish-market. The worst kind of crowd. There were a few respectable cloaks and tunics among them, but for the most part they seemed to be the dirtiest and most desperate of the poor – peasants, beggars, vagabonds and thieves. They were being addressed by a man who was standing on the plinth of a statue by the road. He was largely hidden by the mob, but fragments of his impassioned speech reached my ears. ‘Root him out . . . a danger to us all . . . clear message from the gods . . . insult to the Emperor’s shrine . . . Celtic rat . . . no more than he deserves.’

The crowd muttered and roared in agreement, hanging on his every syllable. He gestured to make some energetic point, and as he raised his head I caught a better glimpse of him.

I tried to flatten myself on the litter. He was too engrossed in his own oratory to notice me, but I would have known that grizzled battering ram of a head anywhere – even without the stave the speaker carried in his hand. It was the ringleader from my kitchen earlier – and he had wasted no time in finding himself an audience. This was clearly not just the crowd that had first accompanied him.

He was reaching his peroration now.

‘Are we going to find him?’ he hollered as I passed, and ‘We are!’ they all roared back.

‘This is witchcraft!’ one desperado called, and the mob took it up. ‘Stop the sorcerer! Dead or alive!’

It was a sickening moment. Witchcraft is a capital offence – it undermines the state. Whole families have been decapitated for the crime, and buried with their severed heads between their knees. And being a citizen is no defence.

I let the litter take me to the high priest’s house after all.

I was seriously uneasy by this time, especially as there was a little knot of people gathered opposite, outside Optimus’s house. These were clearly wealthy citizens, quite a few of them in Roman dress, and they stopped to watch the litter as it drew up, and I got out to pay. They were looking at me oddly, I was sure, and my heart was in my mouth when one of them nudged his companion, nodded towards me and whispered something in his ear. I was expecting to be hailed at any minute, but no one accosted me, and I reached the front door without incident.

I knocked. The slave who kept the door pulled back a wooden shutter, and looked at me for what seemed an age. Surely I was not imagining it? The man was unwilling and suspicious.

I was desperate to get inside. ‘I am the Citizen Longinus Flavius,’ I heard myself saying, afraid that somebody was listening. (It was true, in case anybody questioned it. Those are my first two official Latin names, although no one ever calls me by them.) ‘I have business with the high priest and with Marcus Aurelius Septimus.’

The doorman’s hostile expression did not waver. His eyes never left me for an instant, but after a moment’s further hesitation he opened the door at last and let me in.

‘Through there,’ he muttered ungraciously, by way of greeting. He made no attempt to call an attendant for me.

I went in the direction he had indicated, and found myself in the high priest’s atrium.

It was not a welcoming room – more like something in a public meeting hall than a private residence. I felt almost as if I had stumbled into a courtroom by mistake. It was extremely intimidating, in my agitated state.

White statues and an ornamental central pool (which must have been filled and drained by slaves – the room was, quite sensibly, roofed against the Glevum winter snows); a huge mural on the walls depicting a rather gruesome scene of white bulls being led to sacrifice; and a shrine to Jupiter in a corner niche. Beside it, through an open door, I glimpsed an even grander space beyond. Hardly a comfortable room.

But this was not a courthouse, I told myself. Merely a private atrium designed to daunt. Around the walls there ran an elaborate but extremely ugly frieze, depicting a parade of sacrificial birds, and the same pattern was repeated in the (admittedly well-laid) mosaic of the floor. It must be a strange business, I thought, practising to be Flamen Dialis all your life.

The furniture was on a massive scale as well: all clumsy, oversized and gilt. There was a huge carved wooden bench for visitors – too high to sit comfortably upon – and a gilded table set in front of it, on which there was already a dish of unleavened bread and honeyed dates, some drinking cups, and a pitcher of what I took to be the customary watered wine. An open door led to the garden and the inner wings beyond.

I was hesitating over what to do when a small slave, who had been standing unnoticed by the wall, came forward to invite me to sit down.

‘I will try to find somebody to receive you, citizen, though I am not sure where my master is. We received an imperial messenger earlier today, and the pontifex has been closeted with the governor’s personal representative ever since. And he has problems at the temple too – as no doubt you are aware. Nevertheless, I’m sure he’ll see you when he can. Please partake of the refreshments while I go to find someone to announce you to.’

I sat down, grateful to be safely here, even if I could expect a longish wait. I waved aside the offer of the sweetmeats, though. I was far too upset to eat even the dry bread, let alone the honeyed dates – however much of a luxury Marcus would have thought them. Preserved Roman fruit is always too sweet and sticky for my taste.

The slave boy was looking at me oddly – it is not polite to spurn such hospitality – so I did allow him to pour me something to drink. Not wine, as it turned out, but water – which in general I prefer. However, this water had that unmistakable stale smell and yellow tinge which results from the current Roman fashion of storing it for months, or even years, to ‘improve the quality’. I prefer my water straight from the spring, as nature intended it, and in my anxious state I could not stomach this. I feigned a sip or two, but as soon as the page had disappeared I tiptoed over to the pool.

There was nobody in sight, and I poured the liquid guiltily away, before going back to sit uncomfortably on the bench.

And then there was nothing else to do but wait. I have grown accustomed to waiting in my life, but today I found it difficult to sit patiently. I was as restless as water on a griddle. It is conventional, of course, for an important man to make you wait a long time for an audience – the more important the man, the longer the wait, and men don’t come much more important than the pontifex. And if he was ‘closeted’ with Marcus it would be twice as long. Thanks be to the old gods of sky and stone that this second imperial messenger had left the city earlier in the day! If Commodus’s representative had been greeted by a shouting mob at the temple gates, I shuddered to think what the punishment would be – both for the city and for the unfortunate pavement-maker who’d occasioned the unrest.