When I heard that I was wanted I actually smiled. A summons to my patron could not be ignored (even my wife could hardly gainsay that!) so I scrambled down gratefully and dusted off my hands. ‘Maximus!’ I said briskly. ‘Bring me some water so I can rinse my hands and face.’
The boy — who, despite his name, was easily the smallest of my slaves — grinned up with evident relief and hastened off to get the bowl. Gwellia glared at me.
‘I suppose that you will want him to accompany you, now?’ she said. ‘You’ll claim it won’t be proper to arrive without a slave?’
I nodded. ‘Well, it is expected that I’ll have an escort, as I am a citizen!’ I said placatingly. ‘And Marcus did give me that red-headed pair of slaves. I shan’t take both of them, only Maximus. He is not adept at bunching reeds, in any case. I’ll leave you young Minimus and the kitchen slave to help. They will be more use. And look who’s walking this way from the house next door!’ I gestured to the path that led through my enclosure to the rear, where my adopted son was hurrying towards us down the hill. ‘It’s Junio. I’m sure he’ll lend a hand. I taught him years ago to thatch a roof, so I can safely leave the rest of it to him.’
Gwellia looked doubtful, but Junio was delighted to be asked. He had been my slave for many years until I freed him and adopted him, and the fact that he was now a citizen himself had given him no false ideas of dignity. Indeed, he had seen me working on the roof and come on purpose to see if he could help, and he seemed positively flattered to be put in charge, so I left him to it. I quickly rinsed my face and hands, and (with Maximus’s help) changed my dusty tunic and put my toga on. Then — accompanied by the returning messenger — I set off with my servant to see His Excellence.
I was glad to be relieved of thatching, which was cold and tiring work, and was gleefully expecting to be welcomed to the house and provided with some delicious dates or cheese and wine. However, when we reached the villa, it was not to be. Marcus was in the garden with his wife and child, I was told, and having left my slave sitting snugly in the servants’ waiting room, I was led out to the draughty courtyard garden at the back. The day was beginning to look ill-starred after all.
Marcus was sitting in an alcove near the apple trees, wrapped in his warmest cloak, watching fondly as his young son pushed a leather horse on wheels. When he saw me, however, his demeanour changed. He motioned his family to leave us two alone and extended a vague, ringed hand for me to kiss.
I knelt and made obeisance, as I always did, though the paving stones were chilly on my ageing knees. ‘Your servant, Excellence!’ I murmured, to the ring. And added, as he permitted me to rise, ‘That son of yours will make a fine cavalry officer some day.’ I gestured towards where the boy was toddling indoors, accompanied by his mother and the nursery slave.
But flattery, even of Marcellinus, won no smile today. My patron indicated a low stool where the nursery slave had sat and, almost before I’d squatted down on it, he was speaking urgently. ‘Libertus, I have need of your advice. Voluus the lictor. You have heard of him?’
‘Indeed so, Excellence.’ I was taken by surprise. ‘He has been the talk of the whole town.’ Marcus said nothing, so after a moment I added hopefully, ‘He has bought a grand apartment, so I understand. The one that wealthy tax-collector used to have. Very close to where you have your own?’
My patron, like every magistrate, had a residence in town — owning a property of a certain size is a prerequisite of many civic posts. Marcus’s was large and in a sought-after spot — the whole of the first floor over a wine-shop near the forum — though he rarely used the place, as far as I could see, perhaps because the floors above it swarmed with poorer tenants, with their noise and smell. Of course, the distance to the town was not an obstacle. Unlike humbler folk like me, Marcus didn’t have to walk the weary miles there and back: there would always be a gig or litter, or at least a horse, to carry him each way.
‘His flat is a lot further from the forum than my own. And I hear he paid a great deal for the privilege!’ Marcus snorted. ‘But he’s still to be virtually my neighbour in the town. A lictor, indeed. What are we coming to? You know he’s holding a welcome banquet for himself? Half the town council boast that they’re invited to his feast. I don’t understand what the attraction is. He’s not even a person of real patrician rank, only a freeborn citizen of Gaul. He must think himself important because his master was. Well, we’ve never felt the need for such officials here.’
‘I believe your friend the Governor Pertinax had lictors, Excellence,’ I ventured doubtfully. It was never wise to contradict my patron in this way, but if I failed to remind him of some salient point he was inclined to blame me afterwards.
However, I was relatively safe. All his irritation was for Voluus today. ‘Pertinax? Of course he had lictors — eight of them, in fact, the whole time that he was governor of Britannia. But for ceremonial purposes alone — to accompany him in public and to guard his house. Of course it is different now he’s been promoted to the Prefecture of Rome — in the capital he has to have them all the time, even when he goes out to the baths — but while he was here, he didn’t have men in fancy uniform dancing attendance everywhere he went, let alone waving their rods and axes in everybody’s face, just to symbolize their powers of punishment. Certainly I never felt the urge to make a show like that!’
I stared at him. I hadn’t thought of it, but of course if anyone was entitled to have lictors locally, it was His Excellence. Quite junior magistrates in other places had them, so I’d heard, simply as a token that they held imperium, which meant officially the right to read omens in the birds, but in practice the power to summon soldiery. However, Marcus, despite his rank, had nothing of the kind, even when travelling outside of the town. His escort was more generally composed of hulking men in tunics, armed with clubs and swords, which might not have the pomp of a lictorial guard, but was just as effective at expressing power and possibly better as protection on the local roads. Bears and wolves are not impressed by ceremonial symbols of success. I ventured to murmur something of the kind.
That amused him. He very nearly smiled. ‘Indeed. But I did not bring you here to talk about my guard. The problem which disturbs me is this Voluus. If he were simply an ex-lictor, that would be one thing. One could just ignore him as a self-advertising citizen of no especial high-born rank. But this man clearly is immensely rich — and he has invited half of Glevum to his welcome feast. The question is, should I attend or not?’
I gave an inward sigh. If my patron was just fretting about whether to accept it seemed a trivial matter and I was keen to get inside. I did not have the benefit of a woollen cloak, and this brisk March wind chilled me to my bones. ‘What about the other important citizens? What are they going to do?’ I asked in a bright tone.
Marcus looked down his Roman nose at me. ‘The other magistrates and councillors will take their lead from me,’ he said, with some impatience. ‘Several of them have sent to ask what I intend to do.’
Naturally! I should have worked that out myself. I tried to make amends. ‘Then surely you may follow your own impulses on this? If he has no status does it matter if he’s rich? Simple wealth is not the sole criterion of rank. The tax-collector who lived in that apartment till last year was never quite accepted in polite society, though he got to be immensely wealthy in the end. Surely it is more a question of where the money’s from?’
Marcus beamed at me. ‘Exactly, my old friend. Where does Voluus get his fortune from? A lictor gets a reasonable salary, of course, but the amount is fixed. It is a respectable amount, but nothing that would give him riches on the scale he seems to have.’