It was very tempting simply to agree and thus deflect suspicion from Marcus and myself. After all, this was the conclusion that I’d been urging up till now. But I was still uneasy — though I could not say why. It was perverse, I knew, but some demon of honesty obliged me to reply, ‘Yet if this were the work of rebels, why not take the weapons, too? And why kill the horses, which could be of use to them — or at least sold for profit at the market-place?’
I moved towards the nearest creature as I spoke — a stocky animal, clearly one of the horses which had pulled the cart. It had been cruelly disembowelled, the tail and head removed, and it had bled disgustingly. The commander seemed unwilling to approach, but the centurion followed me, still affecting to keep me under guard but at the same time taking a closer look himself. He was obviously emboldened by the commander’s earlier praise and was now anxious to offer his opinions about everything.
‘Perhaps the rebels didn’t have the time to deal with the horses when they took the treasure from the cart,’ he ventured. ‘They would have had to hide whatever they removed, and quickly, too, I suppose.’
‘Then why should raiders — who presumably are simply after gold — stop to chop the bodies up and scatter them about?’ I countered.
The commander smiled at me indulgently. ‘Questions, always questions, citizen! But there is an answer this time. It has been known for rebels to mutilate a corpse — especially those of Roman soldiers, when they can — though the army does not advertise the fact. It happened to a couple from this very garrison not two years ago. It was just before I came, under the previous commander of the fort: the two men ran into a rebel ambush on the road and when the army found the hacked-about remains they couldn’t have identified the bodies of their own if they hadn’t known who they were looking for. But as for severed heads — that’s quite another thing. You don’t need me to tell you that — if there are Druids in the rebellious ranks — the victims’ heads are always seized, and taken as trophies to the sacred grove. Everyone knows that.’
I nodded. I had seen such groves myself, hung with the grisly offerings of the severed heads of foes. I looked down at the mutilated animal again. ‘Heads, I will grant you. And perhaps the human mutilation is what you say it is — a gesture of defiance against the Empire. But why the animals?’
He winced. ‘For the same reasons, wouldn’t you suppose?’
I shook my head. ‘At such a risk? Take that horse for instance: it clearly died there, where it lies — you can still see the hoof prints in the mud, and the pool of blood and trampled grasses where it fell — but most of the hacking must have happened after death. All that dismemberment would have taken quite some time. Why jeopardize your getaway by stopping to do that? You would suppose — whoever did it — that having made the raid, they’d want to disappear as soon as possible. This, after all, is a major public road and it could not be long before somebody arrived.’
The commander heard me out, then answered patiently, ‘Yet I could ask a dozen questions of my own which point the other way. If this was not the work of local brigands, why attack the cart-load here? Why not attack it nearer to the port or somewhere where there is no garrison nearby?’
‘Most of all, if this was personal revenge on Voluus, why not wait till he got to Glevum and murder him as well?’ That was Emelius, proudly laying his idea before his senior officer, as a cat will bring a mouse. ‘Once the lictor is established in the town, with only his own house-slaves for company, robbing and attacking him would be far easier. Imagine deliberately setting on a guard as strong as this!’
I half-expected that he would be rebuked, but the commander smiled. ‘True again, centurion. Remind me to commend you for a bonus on the Nones.’
He took a step or two towards the nearest human corpse, which was lying in the long grass among the trees, and I followed suit to get a better view. This one still had its face and arms attached though both the legs were gone. The owner had hardly been a handsome man in life, but he was young and virile and very muscular. He had clearly been a slave — there was a brand on the shoulder and a slave-disc round the neck — but bizarrely the dead face appeared to wear a smile.
I stared down at the sorry spectacle. Hard to believe that only a day or so ago this fellow had been very much alive and in his prime. He had a dagger too, despite the law, still firmly in its sheath. By whom, and how, had he been set upon — so suddenly that he had not had time to draw the blade? It was just as the centurion had said: death seemed to have caught him entirely unaware.
I shook my head. ‘I suppose that you and the centurion are right. This must have been an ambush by an overwhelming force which made no noise at all on its approach and which caught all the riders — in one stroke — entirely off guard.’ Even as I said it, it sounded improbable.
I looked around again. The fatigue-party had found what seemed to be the driver’s arm, and were still foraging for the rest of him, retrieving bloody limbs to try against the stumps and, under Scowler’s supervision, making a collection of assorted legs and feet. Grisly, certainly, but disquieting as well? There was something — I knew that there was something — right in front of me. What was it that I should be noticing?
There was one severed hand which lay not far away, and I went over to take a closer look at that. I did not pick it up, but crouched down on the grass, consciously attending to every detail. The centurion followed me across and this time the commander accompanied me, too.
‘Found something of interest?’ he said to me at last.
‘I think perhaps I have. See it for yourself.’ I turned the object over gingerly. ‘There is a little staining from the mud but otherwise there are no marks on it. Look at it closely. What does it suggest to you?’
‘The ring has not been looted,’ the centurion said, pointing to a silver ring still on the finger. The promised bonus had redoubled his attempts to help. ‘Though perhaps that’s no surprise. Compared to other things, it was not valuable enough. Obviously they haven’t even tried to pull it off.’ He looked triumphant at his own cleverness.
The commander nodded. ‘But look how relatively undamaged the hand is otherwise. I see what Libertus might be driving at. Even the fingernails are perfect and there’s nothing under them, so it seems that the victim didn’t even scratch or scrabble as he died.’
‘Exactly! There’s no sign that he tried to defend himself at all, even when the killer was right on top of him. No bruises, cuts or scratches on the flesh, except the one blow that lopped it from the arm — and the slight loss of blood that happened after death. Literally, it seems, he did not raise a hand to help himself.’ I got back to my feet, rubbing my hands together to brush off the mud and grass. ‘I wonder. .?’
The commander was looking searchingly at me. ‘What is it you wonder?’
It was just a hazy notion, but I voiced it all the same. ‘Possibly he thought his attacker was a friend? Maybe the whole escort thought something similar. Surely it must be something of the kind? How else would a band of people acting as a guard — and an armed guard at that — permit another group to come close enough to kill?’
He looked a little brighter. ‘I suppose that’s possible.’
‘It would have to be a group that they were not surprised to see — a relief contingent, perhaps, which they’d been warned they might expect?’
‘Which would bring us back to some sort of conspiracy from here.’ The chiselled face relapsed into a frown. ‘Oh, dear Mercury, let’s hope that you are wrong and this is the work of simple rebels. It makes things so much easier to understand.’ He moved aside to let two of the soldiers pass, dragging a headless, legless corpse between them to the pile. ‘If you are right, this could be anyone. Anyone with a grudge against the lictor, anyway.’