‘You may find something useful in that sack,’ I said, pointing to the one which had felled Junio. ‘It comes from a pile of household goods we discovered in the shed.’ Servilis looked as though he had been struck by sudden lightening. He glanced sideways at his master, who shook his head at him. Emelius strode over and picked up the sack himself, and as he did so Alcanta gave a moan and slumped on to the ground beside my newly stirring son. One of the soldiers — on his own initiative and seeing she was faint — found a pool of rainwater in a stone feeding-trough and used his helmet as a makeshift cup to splash it on her face. Then, sheepishly, he did the same for Junio.
Meanwhile, everything was happening at once. The soldiers at the well-head gave a triumphant cry and began to haul in quickly on the bucket-chain. Emelius put a hand into the sack and let out a cry as though he had been stung. Florens picked up the corners of his robe and dashed off in the direction of the gig — surprisingly sprightly for a portly man — calling out to Servilis to follow him, while two of the soldiers raced off after him.
Junio, revived by the water on his face, stirred and started to sit up. He looked up, blinking, at Emelius. ‘Treasure!’ he said weakly. ‘Off the lictor’s cart. Sacks and sacks of it. Buried under all the household boxes in the other barn.’
Emelius nodded, producing a fine gold statue from the sack. No wonder it had been heavy enough to stun.
I confess that I was startled. I had thought the treasure would be in the well. I got down off the cart — there was no one near me to prevent me now — and hurried over to see what was being winched up in the pail. I almost wished I hadn’t. As it emerged it was very clear what had obstructed it. In the bucket was a severed head, bearded and bushy and surprisingly intact. I turned away from it.
The centurion was less squeamish about this sort of thing, the result of serving on the battlefield, I suppose. He came, lifted the horrid object by its hair and appraised it with some care. ‘Not been dead for very long,’ he said judiciously. ‘A day or so at most. Bit swollen with the water, but you can see it hasn’t started to decay at all.’
‘Well, it didn’t have the chance. It’s Voluus the lictor, surely?’ I replied. Then, seeing that Alcanta was rousing from her faint, I added sharply, ‘Don’t let his widow see the head.’
But it was too late. She had already seen it as I spoke. She clutched her throat and gave a strangled cry, ‘My love! My husband! Florens cheated me!’ and fell back again into a swoon. The soldier with the water helmet knelt down to her at once, took the pretty head on to his lap and began gently patting both the lovely cheeks — clearly very happy with his self-inflicted task.
Emelius looked at me and rolled his eyes. ‘It seems that you are right. This must be the lictor, though I must say I’m surprised. Doesn’t look quite old enough to me — though it’s difficult to tell. Death seems to suit him, though. Looks almost handsome, in a swarthy sort of way, though I heard that in life he was an ugly brute. It reminds me of someone. I can’t think who it is.’
‘Master!’ Brianus was calling from the cart. ‘Can we get down and have a closer look?’
I looked at Emelius, who nodded to his men, and one of them went over and helped my companions down. Brianus, his hands still tied behind his back, came sidling up to me. ‘Biccus thinks he might know who that is. It’s not my master, though, I’m quite sure of that!’
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘What?’ I found myself shouting. ‘Not the lictor? But Alcanta has just told us that it was!’
‘Well, it isn’t.’ Biccus was gazing intently at the grisly face. ‘But I can tell you who it is. I only glimpsed him for a moment once, when he set his dogs on me, but I’m fairly sure that is the man who used to own this farm. I never knew his name. Antonius, Antoninus, Antolinus — something of the kind.’
‘Dear gods!’ This time it was Emelius who spoke. ‘Antolinus! Of course it is! Didn’t have a beard and lots of curly hair when I last saw him, but that’s who it is. I thought that he was dead. But there’s no doubt about it. Antolinus Gallus. Optio in the Fourth Gauls Half-mounted Auxiliary Regiment.’ He shook his head.
I was still struggling to make sense of this. ‘So you think he was the driver of that treasure-cart? The owner of the belt that someone recognized? And this is what happened to the head?’
The centurion shook his head. ‘Not a chance of it. You saw that body that the death squad found. That man was forty if he was a day. Antolinus was comparatively young — as you can still see by the look of him. But I thought he had been murdered by rebels long ago — they said they found his body. .’ He trailed off. ‘But obviously it wasn’t him at all.’
‘Certainly it wasn’t, if this really is his head. I agree with you — this fellow is relative young and has not been dead for long. If it is your Antolinus, he must have been living somewhere in disguise. Oh, of course! Out here in the country, it’s quite obvious — running a farm he didn’t really understand and hoping the army would never think of looking there for him. A clever ruse, in fact. Often a runaway is better hidden very close to home. People always expect the opposite.’
‘Especially when they think he’s dead,’ Emelius said. ‘I expect there was an ambush but he managed to fight free. It must have been a rebel he hung up on the tree, dressed in his uniform and hacked to pieces to match the way they treated us. No doubt his companion was murdered in the raid and he just deserted, knowing that we wouldn’t look for him.’
‘No wonder he kept dogs to frighten neighbours off. It would have been certain death if they discovered him.’ I looked again at the bearded handsome face. ‘Though somebody obviously did kill him in the end. Probably Florens — though I don’t know why.’
I gestured to the requisition cart, where Florens and Servilis were being bundled in at sword-point, just as I had been — the councillor still protesting that he was innocent. ‘Is it my fault if rebels use my well?’ he was demanding, of no one in particular. ‘Libertus is talking nonsense when he accuses me. Like the rest of his assertions, it’s quite preposterous. Of course I didn’t kill the escort of the cart. How could I have done so? On the Ides the basilica was closed, but I was in the public baths all afternoon and in the evening Gaius had a special sacrifice to mark the day — half the curia was there! And you know yourself that I was in Glevum all day yesterday. And why should I kill the previous owner of this farm? I’d just bought it from him — there are records of the fact. What would I have to gain by killing him and chopping off his head?’
That was the problem with all of this, I thought. I could understand the murder of the lictor, possibly: Florens stood to profit, as Alcanta’s guardian, and more so if he took her as his wife, as she seemed to have agreed. So why bother to steal from the treasure-carts at all, let alone kill the escort in that appalling way? And what had this deserter got to do with it? Yet I was convinced that Florens was at the heart of this.
Emelius was looking equally perplexed, for reasons of his own. ‘But if this is Antolinus, where’s the body gone and, if this is not the lictor, where is Voluus?’ He gazed at me suddenly. ‘You don’t suppose we’ll find he isn’t dead at all?’
That would make nonsense of all my theories, I thought wearily. Florens would get nothing if the lictor was alive — indeed, he would be forced to marry Porteus’s girl. I had a sudden inspiration. ‘Wait a minute!’ I said the words aloud. Without waiting for permission I ran over to the cart. ‘You didn’t meet the lictor, but you went to Gaul? Don’t I remember that you told me that?’
Florens still had self-possession left. He looked disdainfully at me. ‘I met his family, as I told you. I never met the man.’