Mourners have a natural precedence — no one is anxious to offend a corpse and have the angry spirit haunting them — but it was amazing how the sight of the centurion was enough to make them pause. Most simply stared in silence as I was marched along, though I was conscious of some sympathetic whispering. The undertaker’s women carried baskets of sweet herbs — no doubt intended to be added to the pyre — and I caught the sweet smell of lovage as I passed.
Emelius had obviously smelt the herbs as well, for though he did not for a moment drop the dagger at my back, I realized that he’d paused to spit on his free hand then pull his ear with it. Hipposelinum — lovage — once it has been picked, is said to bring ill-fortune if you cross it on the street, but I did not bother to do the self-protective ritual myself. I felt that my own luck could not get much worse, as we found ourselves outside the block where Marcus had his flat.
The wine-shop was still open and a gang of youths was clustered at the door, blocking the pavement and getting in our way. They were dressed in togas and had obviously been sampling the wares — but being quite clearly the sons of wealthy men, they were not afraid of mere centurions. They ignored us totally. One of them was swinging from the painted wooden sign — which showed the nature of the establishment for those that could not read — while his comrades urged him on and the wine-shop owner protested feebly from within.
Emelius muttered something to the nearest youth, who paid no more attention than if he had been a dog. I felt the centurion stiffening with rage, but he obviously did not want to cause an incident, and — putting up his dagger — he gripped my elbow and steered me off the pavement, intending to walk on the roadway round the group of youths.
However, as we did so the fellow dangling from the sign abruptly lost his grip and tumbled to the paving right in front of us. He was too drunk to care and lay there giggling. The sight of the centurion had no effect on him, though his friends seemed suddenly sobered by the accident. They stole sideways looks at Emelius’s stony face and one by one slipped silently away, leaving their comrade lying in the road. He was tittering inanely, but seemed mercifully unhurt.
Emelius stood over him and ordered him to rise, but the boy just looked up at us with a foolish grin. ‘Will do in a minute, need to sleep, tha’s all.’
The shopkeeper came out. ‘Thank Mercury you’ve come! You see what state he’s in. He could have killed himself. I want him arrested and taken home at once. I’ll tell you where to take him — his father is a customer of mine. I’ll write out a bill for you to take as well. Someone’s got to pay. Emptied two amphorae before I got to them, and didn’t have a quadrans between the lot of them.’
The lad on the pavement gave a little grunt, rolled into the gutter and promptly fell asleep.
The centurion turned him over with his foot, though he never slacked his grip upon my arm. ‘I’ll deal with him later. He won’t stir from there. In the meantime, I’ve got work to do. I’m delivering this. . citizen. . to His Excellence’s flat.’
‘Up those stairs and first door at the end,’ the shopkeeper supplied, obviously wishing to be helpful to the authorities. ‘But I don’t think Marcus Septimus is there. I saw him leaving an hour or more ago.’
‘All the same. .’ My escort pressed me on, making no further effort to explain.
The wine-shopkeeper looked doubtfully at me. ‘Well, please yourself, of course. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Either way, I will be waiting when you come down again. In the meantime, I’ll keep watch on him.’ He gestured to the snoring figure lying in the road, whose mud-stained toga had half-unwrapped itself and whose hair was now full of fragments from the mire.
Emelius nodded and marched me to the entrance to the upper floors. The stairwell was poorly lit and I almost stumbled as we hurried up the steps. Unusually, there were no other inhabitants about to stare, a fact which I put down to the late hour of day. Secretly I was rather grateful, though, as it spared me the embarrassment of further scrutiny.
But as we reached the landing the explanation for this lack of bystanders became clear. Marcus’s town doorkeeper was awaiting us. This was a man that I hadn’t seen before, and he was enormous — huge, hairy and malevolent, with pointed yellow teeth, like one of the performing bears that you sometimes see paraded through the streets. His hands were enormous and so covered with matt fur that they might almost have been designed as paws. He held one up to challenge us as we approached. It was holding what appeared to be a twig — though it would have been a baton to any other man.
‘This is the citizen my master told me of?’ His eyes were small and close together, giving him a squint. I thought that I had never seen an uglier man, but his credentials as doorkeeper were in no kind of doubt. The gold-edged scarlet uniform in which my patron dressed his slaves only served to emphasize the giant’s strength and power: the flimsy tunic strained across the muscles in his chest and failed to hide the bulges in his arms and legs.
‘This is Libertus,’ Emelius agreed, ever the proper Roman officer. ‘I was instructed to escort him here.’
‘Then you can leave him with me. I’ll take good care of him.’ The bearish doorman directed a leering smile at me. ‘Welcome, citizen. If you’d just like to step inside?’
NINETEEN
Emelius said nothing further — even a centurion does not argue with a bear — but he transferred me silently, and a moment later I heard his hobnails clip-clopping down the stairs as he hurried off to deal with the drunken youth outside. I felt like a rabbit that’s been let out of a noose only to find itself on the butcher’s block, as I looked up at the doorkeeper who had now become my guard.
He was still giving me that yellow-fanged smile as he raised the heavy latch on Marcus’s front door with one of his massive paws, and with the other steered me sharply in.
I had visited the town apartment several times before but not since my patron had come back from his recent trip to Rome: I knew that the place had been refurbished since, so it was no surprise to find it somewhat changed. It had always been luxurious — even more opulent than the lictor’s rooms and in huge contrast to the commandant’s ascetic residence — but now it was exotically crammed with ornaments and furniture. Here in the entrance-hall alone there was a table and a chest, two marble statues, an altar in a niche and a set of painted murals on the wall, depicting Jove in various guises capturing pretty girls. Bowls of dried rose petals gave off their musty sweetness to the air and lighted tapers flickered from a dozen sconces on the wall, throwing mottled shadows on the mosaic floor. That floor was almost the only feature that I recognized. It was a modest creation of my own.
I was not permitted to stand and look at it. The doorkeeper was still impelling me inside: through the lighted atrium, where there was a team of silent slaves lined up to welcome me, then — with the troupe of servants following — I was whisked on to the dining area beyond. Here again, the oil-lamps were already lit. Before I had the chance to say a single word, I found myself being simultaneously lowered to a folding chair, expertly relieved of my sandals and damp cloak and having a bowl of perfumed water placed before my feet while a hot stone from the brazier was dropped, sizzling, into it.
I was a little anxious about that heated stone: I had not seen it done before and was alarmed that some kind of painful questioning lay in wait for me, but I need not have been concerned. It was simply intended to warm the water up — surprisingly effective, as I soon found out. A pretty little page was already on his knees, solemnly washing my gnarled old toes and legs, while an older one performed ablutions on my hands and face.