‘The person who wrote to threaten him, in fact?’ I said, aware that I had previously argued just the opposite.
The commander made a doubtful face. ‘In that case why not wait and kill Voluus himself? Everyone in Glevum knew he wasn’t on the cart.’ He caught my look and realized that he, too, was now refuting a position he’d once advanced himself. He turned away towards our carriage with an irritated shrug. ‘It does not make any sense to me at all.’
Scowler was loitering a step or two away, and as soon as we moved off he gave a whistled signal to his men and one of the fatigue detachment immediately rushed in and carried off the severed hand that we’d been looking at.
I watched him toss it nonchalantly on to the pile of other parts. One of his colleagues had retrieved the limb from up the tree by now, and that was being tried for size against the driver’s corpse — with some success, it seemed. The whole business was so casually brutal that it made the blood run cold.
Was that the whole idea? I asked myself. I was beginning to rethink my attitude. Was this indeed the private vengeance threatened in advance? Or just the precursor? Was this conspicuous butchery designed to terrify — a kind of promise of what might happen next? That could explain why the bodies were so hacked about and left so conspicuously in a public place — because they were put there on purpose to be found! It would fit with a killer who sent a written threat.
Perhaps, indeed, the whole design was not to kill the lictor at the first attempt, but to make him suffer as his victims must have done: force him to lie awake at night, sweating with cold fear, waiting for the moment when his turn would come to die — yet never quite knowing when that moment was to be. I could imagine how that would be a very sweet revenge.
I turned to give the commander an outline of my thoughts, but he was already making his way towards the path again. He halted as I picked my way towards him, over the trampled bloodstained grasses (duly followed by my ever-present guard) then he gestured to the body pieces heaped up on the cart. ‘Do you want to look at any more of these? Or have we learned everything there is to learn from them?’
‘I ought to examine the driver, at any rate, I suppose.’
He nodded. ‘Sesquipularius!’ Scowler bustled up. ‘Have one of your men unwrap this corpse again. This citizen and I would like to have a closer look at it.’
Scowler saluted and roared orders at the unfortunate owner of the cloak, who hurried over to do as he was told. When he had finished, Scowler turned to us. ‘Ready for your inspection, gentlemen.’
In fact, there was not a great deal to inspect. A bloodless torso in a tunic slashed to shreds, each slash the gruesome centre of a fringe of blood — just like the cloak that I’d seen earlier — except that here one could see the livid wound beneath each savage gash. I lifted back the tunic to take a closer look. No sign of earlier scars. Such internal blood as had remained to him had by this time pooled towards his back, making it dark and mottled like an ugly bruise: the tunic blood-smeared where he’d been propped against the driving-seat. I turned my eyes away — then turned them back again.
That was it! The detail which had been escaping me! I said so to my companions. ‘Why isn’t there more blood?’
Scowler was astonished into a retort. ‘Great Mars, citizen, have you not seen the cart? It’s covered with bloodstains, and the grass is, too. Amphoraeful of it. Even after all the rain we’ve had. How much do you expect?’
I nodded slowly. ‘You’re quite right, of course. There is a huge amount of blood around. On this corpse, for instance. But it isn’t in the places where it ought to be. Look at these stab wounds — there is blood all right, but only on the very edges of the cut. If this man had been knifed while he was still alive, the whole of his tunic would be drenched with blood.’ I knelt and gently turned the garment back again. ‘You see the stains are darker on the outside of the cloth. It’s almost as if the killer dipped the knife in blood before they thrust it in — on purpose to make it look as if the man was stabbed to death.’
‘But, citizen,’ the centurion chimed in, ‘you cannot doubt that he was! There are knife marks everywhere.’
I nodded. ‘And almost none of them have bled. At least, not very much. And that can only mean one thing. It is not only the hacking of the limbs that took place after death — most of this stabbing was done afterwards as well. In fact, I can’t find a single wound that bled as you’d expect. I think he was dead before the blows began.’
Scowler was earning his nickname again. ‘But what about the cart? It’s covered in the stuff. Where did all that come from, if it didn’t come from him?’
I heard myself speaking as if in a dream. ‘I wonder if that is why the animals were killed?’
The commander was frowning down at me, perplexed. ‘What are you suggesting? That none of what we see is human blood at all?’
‘There is no way of telling!’ I rose stiffly to my feet. ‘I was the one who first supposed this was a rebel raid, but I’m beginning to wonder if Porteus is right. I’ve a terrible suspicion that this whole affair is staged — rather like a spectacle in the theatre. Oh, there were savage murders, there’s no doubt of that, and people have been hacked to pieces, as you see. But I’m not certain that it happened here at all.’
TWELVE
There was a moment’s silence. Everyone looked shocked. Then Scowler laughed, a little doubtfully. ‘Forgive me if I’m being impudent, citizen,’ he said, ‘but I think you’re reading too much into all this lack of blood. Have you forgotten that it’s been pouring half the day? Look at the driver’s tunic — or the clothes on any of the corpses come to that — you can see that they are wet. Surely the stains you’re talking of aren’t there because they’ve simply washed away.’
I shook my head decisively. ‘It would not account for why there’s more blood on the outside of the cloth. Quite the opposite! And if he had bled to death here — as it was made to seem — the pools beside the roadway would be streaked with blood, and you can see they’re not.’ The man looked so chastened that I softened my remark. ‘I know there’s been an awful lot of rain, but here we are in the shelter of the trees. If it’s not been wet enough to wash the bloodstains from the cart, how could it dispose of bloodstains on the inside of a cloth?’
‘Of course!’ The centurion chimed in — not so much in my support as to make some contribution, however limited. ‘So, sesquipularius, what do you say to that? Or do you believe that Jove has favoured us with some kind of miracle?’
Scowler gave him a poisonous look but retreated, muttering.
Meanwhile, the commander was examining the cart. He came back looking thoughtful. ‘I do believe the citizen is right. I don’t think the driver was murdered where he sat. Though whether he had simply got down from his perch to help the others when they were attacked, and was mutilated with them, perhaps we’ll never know. Certainly, like them, he has been dead some time.’
I nodded. ‘Sometime late yesterday, I would estimate.’
‘I agree,’ Emelius put in, anxious as ever to be part of this. ‘The bodies have gone stiff — I remember that happening on the battlefield, when we did not have time to move the dead for several hours. They get quite hard to bury when they do not bend, and we sometimes left them for a day or so, till they went limp again; but not too long, or they start to putrify. These have not been dead long enough to smell.’ He looked around, as if alarmed by some unpleasant thought. ‘Let us hope that at least their spirits are peacefully at rest. This forest might be haunted for ever, otherwise.’
The commander silenced him with a look. ‘Of course we know these bodies have been here some hours — they were first discovered shortly after dawn. I wished we’d asked the finder if they were stiff by then. It’s possible they weren’t. I was inclined to think this happened after dark, but it might be that I’m wrong. Few people travel in the forest after dusk — at least not willingly — and there is no sign that they had torches with them on the cart. This may all have taken place today.’