Gwellia had already lain down and gone to sleep. I took my sandals and my toga off, snuffed out the taper and did the same myself.
Chapter Twelve
When I awoke next morning it was long past dawn — perhaps Marcus’s rich food and wine had had some effect on me. Gwellia was obviously already up, and so was the rest of the household by the look of it — the roundhouse was empty, and two rapidly cooling yeast cakes were standing on a plate, all that remained in a platter full of crumbs. Yet the fire was burning brightly — someone had blown the embers into life again and brought in fresh kindling to make a cheerful blaze. Somehow I seemed to have slept through all of this.
I felt a little twinge of discontent. Why hadn’t Junio awakened me? And then I remembered — that was over now. He was not my slave. I could no longer count on him to do that sort of thing.
I crawled out from my cover, pulled an extra tunic over the one I had been sleeping in, and sat down on the stool to eat my solitary meal. For some reason I wasn’t hungry, though the cakes were excellent. I decided I must have had too much to eat the night before.
Gwellia would be concerned if I did not eat at all — she had been anxious lately to build my strength again — and the yeast cakes had been made on my account, I knew. I took a listless bite at one of them, but I had scarcely done so before a face peered round the door, and Minimus was grinning in at me.
‘Ah, master, I see you are awake!’ He was carrying a pitcher of fresh water from the stream, and he came over to my side to pick up a beaker and pour some into it. ‘I was told not to rouse you until you’d had your sleep.’ He passed me the drinking vessel with a smile. ‘The mistress has gone out gathering lichens to boil up for a dye, and taken Cilla with her — to show her how, she says. And the young master has taken Maximus and gone out down the lane.’
‘The young master?’ I was about to say, when I realised that he was talking about Junio, of course, so I changed the question to ‘Did he say where he was going?’
Enthusiastic nods. ‘I was to tell you that he was going back to the villa straight away. He knew you wanted to talk to the land slaves Stygius sent out to ask questions yesterday. He thought it would be helpful if he made a start, by finding out which of them it was who spoke to the father of the Celtic girl who ran away with a man to join an entertainment troupe. To see if she matched the description that you had.’ He looked enquiringly at me. ‘I think that’s what he said. Does it make sense to you?’
My spirits had risen, but I tried to sound judicious. ‘I think so. We heard about this girl yesterday from one of Stygius’s slaves.’ I took another bite of breakfast. ‘It didn’t seem very important at the time, because the slaves had been asking about missing girls, and we knew by the time they returned that we were dealing with a man. But we still have to find the owner of the dress, so if Junio can find out where her parents live we can check with them and see if her appearance tallies with what we heard from the dancing woman last night. It may not turn out to be good news for the family, though, if it does.’
Minimus refilled my beaker before I’d even asked. ‘Do you want me to escort you to the villa later on? Your son presumed you’d want to join him when you’d breakfasted.’
I’d finished my first yeast cake now, and I’d found my appetite. I picked up the second and bit into it. It was even more delicious than the first. ‘We can’t be certain that this is the girl we want,’ I said, through a mouthful of warm crumbs. ‘But it is at least a possibility. And with hair like that she should not be too difficult to trace.’
Minimus looked enquiring. ‘Why, master? What was so unusual about her hair?’
Of course, he had been carrying the torch beside the cart last night and hadn’t heard what our informant said, so I outlined the description for his benefit. ‘Long, limed, yellow braids,’ I finished. ‘There can’t be many girls of that description in the locality.’ I had finished my second yeast cake by this time and I held my beaker out expecting him to fill it, but he did not do so, although he had the pitcher in his hand.
I looked at him in surprise. He was frowning vaguely into the water jug as if he might find inspiration there. ‘I think I might possibly have seen that girl myself,’ he said at last. ‘I noticed someone talking to Aulus one day in the lane — the morning before the civic feast, it must have been — and she had yellow hair. Not ordinary yellow, like Julia’s hair slaves have — it was that strange greenish tinge that comes from using lime. I’ve seen Celtic noblemen whose hair looked just the same. She had it in a great long plait that hung down to her knees. It sounds rather like the same person, doesn’t it?’
I pushed my plate away and spoke quite sternly. ‘Why did you not mention this before? I asked you yesterday if you had seen any peasant women.’
I expected a spirited defence, such as Junio would have given. Minimus, however, simply said, ‘I’m truly sorry, master,’ and looked abjectly at me. ‘I didn’t realise. .’ He stiffened his shoulders as if he expected to receive a blow.
I said, as gently as I could, ‘Realise what? That this might be important? After what I’d said?’
He looked at me apologetically. ‘That she might be a peasant, master. She didn’t look like one. I thought she was a servant on her way to market in the town. She was carrying something in a sack, and she was wearing a colourful sort of tunic thing. I noticed it because it was particularly short.’
‘A tunic?’ I was disappointed now. Perhaps this was a false trail after all.
He nodded. ‘The flimsy sort that slave girls sometimes wear when they are expected to entertain their masters — you know the sort of thing. So short that her hair hung longer than her hems. Probably quite low round the arms and neckline too, but she had a shawl about her shoulders, to cover up the top.’ He frowned. ‘She certainly wasn’t wearing a plaid dress of the kind you talked about — although it might have been in the parcel, I suppose. And she was wearing the sort of heavy boots the woman described. Horrible clumpy shapeless ones — you know, the home-made kind!’
He spoke with the disgust of someone who had always worn custom-made shoes and sandals, cut and sewn to fit, and had never tied pieces of fresh cowskin round his feet — raw side inward, as many peasants do — and been obliged to squelch about until the leather self-cured in place.
I frowned. ‘Rough boots? You are sure of that? Not the sort of footwear you’d expect a household slave to wear.’
He looked at me a moment, and then said in surprise, ‘Of course not, master. I should have thought of that. What owner would supply his maidservant with such awful ugly boots? They made her legs look even thicker and stumpier than they were.’ He grinned. ‘You couldn’t help but notice, because the tunic was so short. I even wondered if she was a. . well. . if she wasn’t exactly a servant in the normal sense.’
I nodded. There were several brothels in the colonia, just as there are in every Roman town, and the girls in some of them wear tunics, too — at least to start with — if one can believe the advertising paintings on the wall. And some customers have strange fetishes about footwear, I believe. ‘So when you saw her with Aulus, what did you suppose. .?’ It was my turn to grin.
He did not smile in answer, but said earnestly, ‘I thought that she was lost. She was on foot and she seemed to be asking directions, or something of the kind — I remember Aulus pointing down the lane as if he was showing her the old route into town. The gatekeepers often have strangers asking them the way, if they have tried to take a short cut down the ancient tracks and missed their road. I simply thought that she had lost her bearings in the woods. In fact, I had forgotten all about her till you described the lime-bleached plaits.’ He frowned. ‘But why is she important, master?’
‘She might well be the owner of the clothes the body was dressed in when it was found. The robe could have been in the parcel she was carrying, as you say, and we now know that she, or someone very like her, offered the dancing woman a bribe to join the troupe. And that someone was wearing a plaid garment at the time.’