‘You should have called us earlier, master. .’ Minimus began
‘. . we would have washed your feet.’ And as if to prove it they each seized one of my legs, and attempted to outdo each other as they rubbed them dry. I feared they would upset me from my stool, such was their eagerness to prove themselves of use.
I held up a staying hand. ‘You first, Maximus!’ Deliberately, I presented my right leg to him, and indicated that he should pat that very gently dry, before I permitted his companion to do the other one. Minimus added a light massage to his ministrations. I have never felt so foolish, or so cosseted.
‘Will you be changing for the banquet, master?’ Maximus enquired.
I was just about to shake my head — I was wearing my best toga already — but Gwellia was far too quick for me.
‘He will change his under-tunic. I have had his white one cleaned. So you can help him strip and wash from head to toe. Empty the bowl, and he can stand in it. There is a jug of fresh water by the door that you can pour over him.’ She saw my look of slight unwillingness — Junio had washed me just the day before — and as they hastened outside with the bowl she turned smilingly to me. ‘Marcus is bestowing a compliment on this house — on Junio and Cilla in particular, of course, but on us as well. Any Roman would have bathed and changed and you must do the same. And, Cilla, your master has said that you may ask the servants questions if you like, but even if you learn something of interest, you’ll wait till afterwards to tell him what it is, and not interrupt the banquet. Ah, husband, here’s your wash.’
I stood up and rather reluctantly took my tunic off and stepped into the empty bowl the boys placed at my feet. I mustered what dignity I could — a naked man is always at a disadvantage in a situation of this kind.
‘Remember, Cilla, it is vital that this evening goes off without a hitch,’ I said, addressing the girl over Minimus’s head, as he clambered on the stool with the big jug in his hand and formed a sort of human screen between us. ‘Any breaking of the rules and the ritual will be spoiled. You might not get your freedom after all. It might be regarded as another bad omen, too. So don’t get so interested in your quest that you fail to join us at the proper — aargh! — time.’ The water was extremely cold.
Cilla nodded. ‘I’ll be very careful.’ She turned her attention to her mistress’s hair.
‘In any case there probably isn’t very much to learn,’ I said, the words coming in little jerks as Maximus rubbed my back with energy. ‘If there were rumours at the villa I’d have heard when I was there, but there were none at all, not even when they thought the body was a simple peasant girl. One of Julia’s servants said as much to me.’ I seized the cloth that Maximus held out and wrapped it round my vitals as I spoke, waiting for lanky Minimus to climb down from his perch and rub the rest of me.
However, the expected pleasant friction did not come. I looked round. Both the boys were gazing at me in astonishment.
Minimus, as usual, was the first to speak. ‘You’re talking of rumours at our villa, master?’ He clambered off his stool.
The older boy added, incredulously, ‘A body, did you say?’
Chapter Nine
It was only then I realised that the two boys didn’t know about the corpse.
It had not occurred to me — but of course they were in Glevum when the discovery was made, and they had not spoken to anyone from the villa since. Kurso and I had not said anything to them when we arrived, and they had obviously been too busy with their knucklebones to listen at the door while I was telling the story to Gwellia and her maid. Even now they had only caught the very end of it and they were goggling with curiosity.
‘You want Cilla to question the villa servants?’ Maximus enquired, and Maximus added doubtfully, ‘Does that mean you want her to question us as well?’
I was about to say it didn’t, when it occurred to me it should. Of course these two might have some information of their own — perhaps without knowing that it was relevant. I looked at them sternly. ‘You don’t know anything about a body, I suppose? No rumours of a missing young man or peasant girl who might have been murdered a day or two ago?’
They glanced at each other in what looked like pure surprise, then — both together — raised their shoulders in a helpless shrug, spread their empty hands and pulled down the corners of their mouths like a pair of tragic masks. The effect, however, was quite comical. Marcus’s expensive dancers could not have moved in more perfect unison.
As usual the younger boy was the first to find his tongue. ‘I don’t believe so, master. The only bodies we saw today were the ones that they were taking to the paupers’ pit. .’
‘. . His Excellence sent us to move them off the road, when he and Lucius wanted to drive through with the gig, on their way to the basilica this morning,’ Maximus added.
‘You probably saw them for yourself,’ Minimus put in.
I nodded. I had indeed encountered the soldier with the mule and its grisly cargo — a pair of dead, broken bodies hanging upside down, their red hair dangling in the dust. Roman law did not permit the disposal of bodies within the city walls — not even those of beggars and common criminals — and these corpses were obviously on their way to be taken out and tipped without ceremony into the common pit.
‘A pair of Silurians, by the look of it,’ I said, then wished I hadn’t. The red hair and a smattering of Celtic now and then suggested that these two boys had Silurian blood themselves.
Minimus, however, seemed eager to assist. ‘I spoke to the mule-driver when I moved him on. A couple of brigands who’d been punished by the courts for robbery with violence on the Isca road.’
I nodded. The road which led from Glevum to the west was still dangerous — not only did the forests harbour wolves and bears, but the route was famous for the brigands who frequented it — some of them disaffected tribesmen from the borderlands, who had never quite accepted Roman rule and harried the supply trains and hapless travellers.
‘Six people robbed and murdered this last moon alone. Marcus was telling Lucius, just the other day. Then these two yesterday. .’ the young slave went on.
‘. . an old man and his daughter, from the sound of it. .’
‘. . stripped and robbed and cruelly stabbed to death. .’
‘. . some soldiers caught the robbers almost in the act, with gold and silver in their saddlebags, and the man’s possessions bundled in their packs.’
‘Even then they pleaded innocence, at first. .’
‘. . but the authorities beat a half-confession out of them. .’
They were so keen to tell me all this that I had to smile. ‘I heard there’d been a bit of trouble that way recently. But I don’t think Silurian rebels are much help to us. Our body was discovered a great deal nearer home.’ Then the implication struck me and I frowned. ‘Though that makes it more surprising, when you think of it. If our killer had simply left the body on the road, instead of carefully concealing it in a ditch on Marcus’s land, it would have been treated as a pauper, probably — somebody would have picked it up and thrown it in the pit, just like the bodies of the couple who were robbed — and there would have been no questions asked at all.’
‘The body was concealed on His Excellence’s land?’ Minimus sounded shocked.
Gwellia interrupted with a kind of mock reproof. ‘If you will finish helping your master to get dressed, and prevent him from shivering to death, perhaps he’ll tell you all about it from the beginning — with less damage to his health.’
The boys looked chagrined, and set to at once. I found myself telling the story as they worked.
They listened, horrified. Although they were very much Celts by birth, they were raised in Roman households and the whole idea of an unburied body at the Lemuria alarmed them terribly.
When I had finished Maximus turned to his fellow slave and said, ‘This happened about two days ago, so the master says. We were at the villa then — we didn’t leave all day. I didn’t notice anything unusual, did you?’ Concern had interrupted the usual duologue. Gwellia’s rebuke was not forgotten, though — he was making himself busy fetching garments as he spoke.