They saw the direction of my glance, and flushed.
‘We had a minute, master. .’ Maximus began.
‘. . just before you came.’ Minimus darted forward to put the bones away. ‘This is not a sign of idleness.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll go and see your mistress. You finish off your game, but be sure you’re listening to hear me when I call. I shall need you in a little while.’
I left them to their knucklebones and went into the roundhouse proper on my own, blinking against the smoky darkness of the room. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I looked around, revelling in the dear, familiar attributes of home: Gwellia’s weaving loom set up against the wall, its stone weights pulling the fabric into shape; the stools set cosily round the fire, and the sides of meat that I had hung last autumn on the beams above, so that the swirling smoke would cure and preserve them for our winter food.
Gwellia was standing with Cilla on the far side of the room, facing away from me. She was clearly unaware that I had arrived, largely because her face and shoulders were muffled in a dress which the maidservant was in the act of pulling over them. Her bare legs were visible right up to the thighs — still very shapely for a woman of her age.
My guess about her preparations for the banquet had been right: there was evidence that she had stripped herself and washed from head to toe. A shallow basin of water was still set beside the hearth, and the robe which Cilla was now tugging down into place was a fine new stola from the marketplace. Normally Gwellia wore clothes made from the Celtic plaid she wove herself, but today was a special occasion and she was dressing for the banquet like the Roman citizen that she had become.
The new robe suited her. It was of a pale rose-madder pink, which showed off the natural darkness of her hair and eyes. She looked magnificent.
‘Gwellia?’
She looked round. I had half expected a rebuke for being at the villa for so long, but she was smiling as she turned about, and twirled to show her stola to best effect.
‘You like it? You don’t think the colour is too strong?’
I thought of the painted dancing girls and smiled. ‘It is beautiful. And so are you.’
She looked away and picked up a silver pendant that I had given her, and made as if to fasten it round her neck. ‘There was trouble at the villa? You were away such a time. I was beginning to get concerned for you. It is not so long since you were very ill.’ It was her way of offering a mild reproof.
I sat down on the three-legged stool beside the fire, and began to unlace my sandal straps. ‘It’s quite a story,’ I said. I told her briefly what had happened at the house.
She listened, the pendant still dangling from her hands. ‘A murdered man? Just where the new house was going to be? Poor Junio! And. .’ She stopped, shaking her head and looking seriously at me.
I put my feet into the bowl. The water was cold and not especially clean but it was very soothing. ‘Poor Julia, as well. She is convinced it is an omen for their journey overseas.’ I wriggled my toes to rinse the dust from them. ‘She even asked Marcus if they really had to go.’
Gwellia made no direct response to this. She motioned towards Cilla with a warning frown. It was meant for me, but the girl took it as a signal to do the pendant up: she stood on tiptoe and reached to fasten it, but it took her several tries to fix the clasp, even though my wife leaned forward to make it easier. I saw that the poor girl’s hands were trembling.
I realised then what Gwellia had been signalling to me. ‘I’m sorry, Cilla. Of course the new roundhouse is to be your home as well.’
She glanced at me and I saw that her eyes were wet with tears. ‘Oh, master,’ she burst out. ‘This corpse. They’ll be sure and bury it before Lamuria, won’t they? Even if they don’t know who it is?’
Gwellia raised her eyebrows and looked across at me. ‘I expect they’re hoping that they’ll discover very soon. I’m sure they want your master to find that out for them and that is what has kept him all this while?’ It was only half a question.
I nodded and she sighed.
‘I wish they would not go on making these demands on you,’ she said. ‘It is not good for your health. But, I suppose, since it is Marcus who is asking you. .’
Refusal would be even more injurious to my health, is what she meant.
‘I would want to do it in any case, for Junio’s sake,’ I said. ‘And Cilla’s too, of course.’
The slave girl did not meet my eyes. She looked down at the floor, where she was drawing circles on the earth-dust with her toe. At last she said, ‘I don’t want to push myself forward, master, but you’ve used my help before. If I can do anything to assist you this time, let me know. Slave or not, I’ll do whatever I can.’
I was about to ask her gently what she thought she could do, but she was too quick for me. ‘You are always saying that there are things that servants can find out that aren’t so easy for a citizen. I could ask questions in the villa, while I’m there.’ She sounded eager. ‘There’s one of the kitchen slaves in particular I used to know well. .’
‘Cilla,’ I said gently, ‘tonight you will be freed. You are invited to the banquet to signify the fact. After that you won’t be a servant any more. You’ll be a free woman, betrothed to a free man — to a citizen, indeed.’
‘You mean my friend isn’t likely to confide in me again?’ Cilla sounded shocked, as if this aspect of her new existence had not previously occurred to her. ‘She’ll think that I’ve joined the owner class and treat me differently?’
It was almost exactly what I’d meant, but I said, ‘You can hardly go wandering into the villa kitchens unaccompanied, in any case. It isn’t the sort of thing an invited visitor can do. And you will be a guest tonight and not a slave — a special guest, in fact.’ I scooped some water up into my hands and rinsed my lower legs.
Cilla’s usually cheerful, plump young face creased in an unhappy frown. Then all at once it cleared. ‘But I’m not invited till the final course,’ she said. ‘I’m still a slave till then, so I could talk to her. I could even go and show my tunic off. It’s a nice one that my former mistress Julia sent for me — a lady’s tunic, all the way down to the ground instead of stopping at the knees the way servants’ tunics do. My friend would like to see it. When I was working at the villa we always talked about the things we would wear and the colours we would choose, if we could buy our freedom and have any clothes we liked. “Anything but this old greeny-brown,” she used to say. .’
‘Very well, Cilla,’ my wife interrupted. Cilla had a tendency to enliven her reports by imitating the voices of the people she described — she’d captured the adenoidal tones of her friend the kitchen maid quite comically, I thought, but Gwellia, for once, did not seem inclined to smile. ‘You obviously have an interest in the matter,’ she said seriously, ‘and if you can help your master to clear it up, I should be very pleased, for his sake as well as yours. What do you say, husband?’
It was clearly not a moment for levity. I turned to Cilla and tried to look properly severe. ‘You may question the servants at the villa, if you have the chance. But you are not to go anywhere unaccompanied, or make yourself a nuisance in any way at all.’
She looked chastened. ‘Very well, master. I won’t let you down,’ she said, and Gwellia rewarded me with an approving nod.
Great gods, I was in danger of being ruled by women here! I felt the need to assert authority. I clapped my hands and raised my voice a notch. ‘Maximus! Minimus! I need a drying cloth!’
The result was very soothing. I had hardly got the words out before the boys were at the door, though Cilla had to point out where the clean rags were kept, hanging in a bag beside the wall. Each boy selected a likely piece of cloth, and then came across to kneel beside me, one on either side.