I thought for a moment he might volunteer to bear the charge for me, but he simply nodded. ‘Very well. There isn’t a litter anywhere in sight, in any case. I’ll send my slave back to my rooms to fetch some other shoes — these are expensive but they’re rather soft to walk in on the streets. He can catch us up. In the meantime, let us make a start. If we keep to the main roads it should be fairly clean. This way, citizen.’
He led the way across the dock, in the opposite direction from the way we’d come, where a wide street led directly into town, though the stones of the roadway were deeply grooved with carts. The pavements on each side were particularly high, to save pedestrians from walking in the dirty water, I suppose, on occasions when the river overflows its banks and — in dryer times like these — from the animal droppings and squashed vegetables which are the inevitable refuse of the town. Even on the pavement Redux was picking his way with care, obviously anxious about his fancy shoes.
He was still pleased with his bargain, and he chatted about that — how the Romans were building concrete drying pans to improve the quality of salt, and how the price was still remaining high — as we hurried past shops and drinking places not so different in kind from what we’d passed before. Except that the soup kitchens and tavernas here were prosperous and clean, and if (as was likely) some offered girls upstairs, the advertisements for their services were much more discreet. But then we moved into the area where the copper workers were, and conversation became impossible. Not only was the street crammed with their merchandise, so that we had to walk past it in single file, but from the interiors incessant hammering went on. I wondered how the other little businesses survived the noise, squeezed into tiny premises between the coppersmiths, but they seemed oblivious. There was a busy fruit stall, a flower seller with a cart, a shoemaker in a narrow doorway stitching boots, and a baker pulling fresh loaves from an oven as we passed.
I stopped to wait for Redux, who had fallen a little way behind. He was looking more uncomfortable at every step, and clearly it was not entirely the shoes. The plump face was red and glistening with sweat, and it occurred to me that he rarely walked at such a pace — certainly not for any distance, anyway.
He lumbered up to us, flustered and out of breath. ‘I’m sorry, citizen. I can’t keep up with you. In these shoes anyway!’ He stepped into the gutter as he spoke, to avoid a carpet stall which was spread out across the pavement, and narrowly avoided a rotting cabbage in the road. ‘I don’t know where my slave has got to with those stouter ones.’ He looked helplessly up and down the street as if the boy might suddenly appear by sorcery.
He looked so unhappy that I took pity on his plight. ‘Look, there is a litter in that alleyway. Bringing someone for the shoemaker, by the look of it. I’ll send Minimus to catch it, if you like, and you can get them to take you to where Antoninus lives. It isn’t very far now, so you can wait for us. As you can see, we won’t be far behind. And if your slave turns up with your other footwear in that time, we’ll bring him with us. You can change shoes when you’re there.’
He seemed to hesitate. ‘Well, if you’re quite sure, citizen? It would be a relief. I’m afraid I’ve stained the leather of this one past repair. Will you be able to find the place all right? I’ll stand outside it on the pavement till you come.’
I sent Minimus at once to catch the litter before the slaves went dashing back to town looking for other customers. He came back a moment later. ‘They’ve contracted to take the lady home again, when she has finished with the shoemaker, so they must hurry back, but they will take you quickly if you are ready now?’
Redux was still puffing but he looked relieved. ‘In that case, citizen, I will see you there. It isn’t above a half a mile or so from here, at most. If it weren’t for these shoes I could have walked it easily. .’ He broke off as the litter-bearers trotted up to us, and put the litter down for him to sit in it. They got him seated, fixed a price, and then they bore him off.
I grinned at Minimus. ‘I wonder they did not ask him double price. He must be twice the weight of some other customers. Of course those slaves are trained to move at quite a pace, but if we hurry we can nearly walk as fast. We don’t have Redux to carry, after all. It may even be possible to keep them in sight, and then we shall know exactly where we’re going.’
Of course it wasn’t quite as easy as all that. There were donkey carts and street sellers and stalls to dodge around, and even a fortune-teller trying to accost us as we passed but we hurried on and, only a little later, found ourselves in the centre of the town, close to the forum and the temple of Jupiter which was next door to it.
‘Second block along,’ I said, recalling my directions from the doorkeeper. ‘On the first floor, above a cobbler’s shop.’
Minimus looked doubtful. ‘Two blocks in which direction?’ he enquired. He looked around. ‘I can’t see Redux waiting anywhere.’
He spoke too soon, for even as he framed the words the man himself appeared at the doorway of a building a short way further on. He seemed to be in some measure of distress, staring first up and down the street and then behind him in a frenzied way as if the furies were pursuing him. Then he began examining his clothes, dabbing at his toga and his handsome cuffs. I remembered what the doorkeeper had said about the slops and could not suppress a smile, although Redux looked almost on the verge of running off.
Then he caught sight of us and gave a frantic wave. We hurried up to him.
‘What happened, citizen? I thought that you were going to wait for us out here,’ I began — and stopped.
If he had been red-faced before he was bright scarlet now, and I was almost fearful that he was going to burst. He was breathing so hard that he could barely speak. He reached out and put a hand upon my arm, as if he needed the support.
‘I just went up to tell his slave that you were on your way, but the door to his apartment was open, citizen. Of course, that’s not uncommon. When he has private business of the kind that we discussed, he always made a point of sending all his slaves away. I put my head around the door and called — but there was no reply. So I went in. .’ He shook his head. ‘It isn’t any use.’
‘Antoninus refused to see us? Or he wasn’t there at all?’ I asked, feeling rather foolish to have brought the poor man all this way, and caused him such exertion for nothing after all.
Redux surprised me. ‘Oh, he was there all right. But. .’ He shook his head again. ‘On second thoughts, citizen, I think you’d better come and see him for yourself.’
Fifteen
Once inside the building I could see at once what Honorius’s doorkeeper had meant about the stairs. The flight which led up from the street was adequately broad as far as the first floor but above us the steps were narrow, steep and treacherously dark, and the whole stairwell smelt atrociously. As I followed a breathless Redux up to Antoninus’s door, I was uncomfortably aware of people overhead coming to peer suspiciously at us from the gloom, though nobody actually threw any slops on us.
There were other inhabitants of the upper floors jostling against us as we climbed the stairs. A stout woman struggled past, carrying a heap of turnips in her skirt, while her thin children dragged up a branch of firewood — though there were clearly neither hearths nor chimneys in the rooms above, and cooking fires in tenements like these were officially against the law. As we reached the turning our way was almost blocked by a bunch of skinny, toothless, old men squatting in the corner, bickering at dice; they scarcely looked up or moved to let us past.
The door to Antoninus’s apartment, when we came to it, looked particularly imposing by comparison. It was large and thick with a hefty lock and, although Redux had warned me of the fact, I was half-surprised to find it currently ajar. Even so, it was not the kind of entrance that one walked through unannounced, and I was about to knock discreetly when our companion, who was scarlet and panting from climbing up the steps, leaned past me, pushed the door wide open and said breathlessly, ‘There is no point in doing that, citizen. There are no slaves to answer if you knock, in any case. Just go inside. Antoninus is in the other room.’