‘You have news about Morella?’ I spoke in Celtic now.
He recognised the strategy. A brusque, unwilling nod.
‘Something that has come to light since we talked earlier? You haven’t found her?’
He snorted. ‘I only wish I had. I’d give her such a beating she’d wish she’d not been born.’ He still spoke in Latin, as he’d done throughout — as if he had deliberately declined to take my lead. ‘She’s stolen money from me, that’s what she’s done! No wonder you said that she had quite a lot!’
‘Morella didn’t mean it,’ her mother pleaded. She had clearly derived his meaning from his tone. She turned to me. ‘I don’t know what he’s saying, but she is not a thief. If she took money, she thought it was her share. He must have told them a hundred times that he’d put cash by for them all. I know Morella — she won’t have taken it all. It can’t have been more than a few denarii.’
‘Not an aureus for example? And some other golden coins?’ I had supposed we were talking about the treasure in the hem.
The worn face looked quite startled. ‘Good Jupiter! Where would a farmer get gold pieces from? Why, the only time I’ve ever seen an aureus in my life was when my uncle got a couple amongst the coins they gave him for his farm land, years ago.’
‘Silence, woman! What has that to do with it?’ Farathetos was speaking Celtic now.
I paid no attention. ‘Your uncle’s land?’ I said. ‘That was a payment from the army, I presume?’
She looked apprehensive, but she answered with a nod. ‘Six gold pieces they gave him, when they seized his farm. He was quite pleased to start with. More than his forefathers had got, he said — but when he took one to the market they confiscated it. Said it wasn’t proper coinage, or something of the kind. The disappointment was what killed him in the end, I think. He had the others buried with him when he died.’
The man had been trying to interrupt her throughout, between attempts to quell the dog. I ignored him. A horrible suspicion was forming in my mind.
‘Buried with him? As his funeral goods? I can imagine that. We Celts like to give a man his finest possessions when he dies, so that he has them with him in the afterlife. And there is nothing that a Celt likes more than gold. Even if he cannot spend it in the marketplace.’ I glanced at her husband, who was scarlet-faced.
She looked defeated. ‘It was still pure gold,’ she said. ‘Valuable if it was only melted down. I think he always meant to do it, though he never did. He feared they’d confiscate the rest of it as well.’ She glanced towards her husband, who was looking thunderous. ‘But I don’t know why I am telling you all this. The gold was buried with him — nothing to do with what Morella took. It’s just that you asked about the aureus. Of course there was no question of anything like that. The most she could have taken were some silver coins.’
‘How much exactly?’
She looked at him for guidance, but he simply scowled. ‘There might have been a double denarius or two, and altogether it could have added up to quite a lot — though I never saw it personally, of course. My husband never told me where he’d hidden it, though he was always saying he had a wedding portion for the girls, and threatening to cut them off if they displeased him in any way.’
It was too much for the farmer. ‘Silence, wife!’ He aimed a kick at her, and in the process almost loosed the dog. ‘Here, take this blasted animal and keep an eye on it and leave us men to talk without your whining on. It’s half impossible to hold a conversation like this.’
He thrust the rope into her veined and work-worn hands. The creature was too strong for her, you could see that instantly, and I was afraid that in her less restraining grasp the brute would get away and go for me again; but once it sensed its freedom it rushed off the other way, down the lane and into the forest opposite, dragging the unfortunate woman after it. We could hear them in the distance: the dog’s persistent bark, and the woman’s plaintive cries for him to stop.
‘Caught the scent of something,’ was all the farmer said. ‘Stupid woman hasn’t the first idea how to handle that dog. Fortunately it will always come back when I call.’ He spat and rubbed his hands. ‘Now where were we?’
‘You discovered that Morella had taken money from you, I believe,’ I said. ‘Four golden coins? Is that the truth of it? Money that you stole from your wife’s uncle’s grave?’
He had turned a shifty red but he held his ground. ‘Of course I wouldn’t stoop to steal them from the grave. They weren’t ever buried — and they were mine in any case. The dying man had told me to keep them for myself, and that is what I did. I took them out before we sealed the grave. Of course I did not say anything to anyone — they’d only have insisted that I put them back. I was going to have them melted down, in time — the gold has got value if the coins have not. And why shouldn’t I? He’d given it to me. It was the family’s money and it was no use to the dead.’
I stared at him. I did not believe a word of his account and I doubted that his wife and her family would either. I wondered what would happen if they learned he’d robbed a grave. Probably, at best, he would be outcast from the tribe — lose his wife and children and his land as well, and be driven into exile by being wholly shunned. At worst? It made me shudder. Yet, by claiming that Morella had robbed him of the coins, he had put himself in danger of something of the kind. So why had he come to me?
Because he knew I might be able to trace the coins back? They were so unusual that it was more than possible. Some army requisition officer had clearly palmed the uncle off with coinage which was a problem to dispose of otherwise: probably he had taken it as loot himself or as a secret bribe, so he would hardly come forward to acknowledge it, but it would not be difficult to find out who it was: the man who had been in charge of requisitioning the land for expanding the territorium — the army farm — would be a matter of record in the garrison.
But if Farathetos had not told me that he’d lost the coins, I would never have known the story of the purchase of the farm, so why should anybody learn that they weren’t safely in the grave? I knew he wouldn’t tell me what his reasons were, even if I asked. I tried another tack. ‘And Morella knew where you’d hidden the coins?’
He spat. ‘She wouldn’t have gone digging by the hollow tree by chance. She must have known where I hid my money all along. She didn’t know I had those particular coins, of course. She’d only seen them when we carried her great-uncle to his grave. But she knew that I had money. As her mother says, it was supposed to be her wedding portion, and her sisters’ too.’
‘Yet she only took a part of what you had concealed?’ I said. ‘She might not have realised exactly what she’d found.’
‘Not realised?’ A derisive snort. ‘Of course she realised! Morella’s simple-minded but she’s not completely daft. She knows gold when she sees it — and she must have guessed where I had got it from.’ He glared at me. ‘And now look what she’s done. She’s going to ruin me. I had matches in prospect for my next two girls, you know — far more valuable and pretty than Morella ever was.’
‘And you can’t afford to pay the dowries now?’
‘Worse than that, by Mithras.’ He was scowling at me as if this whole affair had been my fault. ‘I’d made a marriage pact for them, though I haven’t told them or their mother yet. Two brothers in the jewellery business in Corinium. Not young, but quite successful. I’ve dealt with them before. They agreed to take the girls, on condition that I would give the coins as dowry when they wed. It seemed a neat solution, with benefits all round — they could melt them down and work the gold, and no questions asked. I didn’t tell them where I got the coins from, and they didn’t enquire. I didn’t have to tell the women what the bargain was.’