‘And when you went in,’ I said urgently, ‘what did you find?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing. Nothing you wouldn’t expect. Someone had eaten half the food, drunk all the wine, and the beds had been slept in. Nothing else. No signs of a struggle, if that is what you thought.’
It was what I had thought. I shook my head doubtfully. ‘And Felix took the house. You are sure of that?’
He spread his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘Lucius Tigidius Perennis Felix. He told me his name himself, and I saw his seal. I wouldn’t forget him in a hurry. I don’t get many customers like him.’
That made me smile. ‘I imagine not.’ Clearly the Perennis name meant nothing to him: he was merely aware that Felix was a very rich man to be interested in such squalid entertainment. ‘No wonder you were tempted to spy. A man with that much purple on his edges must have aroused your suspicion.’
The brothel-keeper shook his head. ‘I don’t know about his toga-edges, citizen; he was only wearing a tunic and cloak. Mind you, he looked well in them. A flashy sort of gentleman.’
I stared at him. ‘Perennis Felix,’ I said carefully, ‘is — or rather was — a squat middle-aged Roman with an ugly face. He wouldn’t look well in anything.’
My informant shrugged. ‘Not this Perennis Felix, citizen. He was as handsome a young man as I have ever seen astride a horse. Though I have heard a rumour he is dead.’ Suddenly he tugged my arm and pointed through the open door behind me. ‘But the rumours can’t be true. There is no “was” about it, citizen. Here he is now, riding up the lane. Ask him yourself.’
I turned in the doorway and looked at the horseman.
It was Zetso, naturally. For a moment he clearly did not recognise me — the last time he had seen me I had been dressed in a toga. Then recognition dawned, and from the expression on his face he was as shocked and astonished to see me as I was to see him. Indeed, if it had not been for the guard waiting at the gate, who quick as thought zipped out his sword and laid a hand on the bridle, I believe that Zetso would have turned round and galloped away as fast as his horse would carry him.
Chapter Twenty-two
I don’t know what I had expected. Remorse, perhaps, or revealing confessions. I got neither. Zetso had nothing at all to say, and continued to say it even when, at my request, the octio had him taken under guard into the mansio and held there.
‘A difficult case,’ the octio informed me uneasily, when I arrived at the mansio a little later (a man of my years cannot keep up with marching soldiery). ‘In my position it is hard to know how to proceed. I am caught between the governor’s orders and the Emperor’s. Perhaps you would like to question him yourself?’
They had him in an outbuilding, a little room with stone walls and high slit window spaces — not a cell exactly, but all the same a place which the passing military occasionally used to secure less willing members of their company. Zetso was sitting on a stone bench by the wall. He was unchained, but with his flamboyant looks and scarlet cape he looked like an exotic bird in a cage.
When he saw me he raised his head defiantly. ‘On what authority do you hold me here?’
I began sincerely to wish I had my toga with me. In these simple garments I hardly looked a person of influence. I tried to bluster it out of him. ‘I carry a warrant from my patron, Marcus,’ I told him. ‘It carries his personal seal and will be honoured by the Governor Pertinax — and he represents imperial authority anywhere in these islands.’
Zetso gave me a look of curdling contempt. ‘To Dis with Pertinax,’ he informed me, shortly. ‘I carry an imperial warrant. It was issued by the Emperor Commodus himself, and is his authority anywhere in the Empire. It will be honoured by everyone — including yourself, my pavement-making friend — or else His Imperial Excellence shall hear of it. I do not think you would enjoy the consequences.’
He reached into a large leather pocket at his belt and briefly took out a scroll. He did not offer to show it to us. He did not need to. It was sealed with a purple ribbon and a seal which must have been the size of a man’s hand, though I could not actually see that, since it was protected by the most elaborate enamelled seal-box I have ever set my eyes on. The octio, who had accompanied me to the room, ran an uneasy tongue around his lips.
‘And this,’ Zetso said, indicating the pile of dirty straw, the reeking candle and the crude water pot which was all the furnishings of his cell, ‘is how you dare to treat me? I am sure the Emperor will be very interested.’
The guard turned the same sickly shade of yellow-grey as the straw and shifted from foot to foot. He gave me an agonised glance which said, more clearly than any words, that he wished devoutly to be somewhere else.
I made one last attempt. ‘The warrant which you carry was issued, surely, not to you but to your master — Felix?’
Zetso looked at me as Felix had looked at the shattered corpse in the forum, with distaste and disdain.
‘I have my master’s authority to wield it,’ he said. ‘And it is especially framed to allow me to do so. My master had a number of affairs to see to in this province, some of them of imperial importance. He could not attend them all in person. He arranged with Commodus that I should be specially named as his proxy.’
‘And now that he is dead?’
‘Dead?’ Zetso stared at me in astonishment.
I nodded assent. ‘The evening of the feast, when you were so conveniently absent.’
That stunned him. He leaped to his feet. ‘Of what am I accused?’
I thought about that warrant in his pouch. ‘You are not accused of anything. At least, not yet. But naturally I wished to question you on this matter. In such circumstances any man may lawfully be detained for questioning.’ I did not add that men carrying a warrant were usually exempt, at least if the questioner had any respect for his own safety.
The fight had gone out of him. ‘Dear Jupiter! I had not expected this so soon. I must consider what to do.’ The news — if it was really news — appeared to have shattered his lofty disdain. He turned to me urgently. ‘By the strength of Hercules,’ he said, ‘I had no hand in this. How could I have? I was miles away. You saw me yourself.’
‘You left the feast,’ I said, more savagely than was strictly necessary. ‘Unexpectedly.’
He flushed. ‘My master gave me an urgent message to deliver. It often happens, when he does not require me to drive him. Felix was never a man to brook delay — once he has thought of a matter it must be done immediately. I arranged a horse and attended to the business at once.’
‘But you did not return? Where did you go? I had thought that rumours of the death and funeral would have been the talk of the province.’
‘It is true that I have been. . out of the public eye.’
‘Where? Do not try concealment. It will be easy to discover. I will have the couriers ask at every door if necessary — on the order of my own warrant which you despise so much. Others respect my patron’s name, if you do not.’
Zetso collapsed like a punctured boil. He sat down lamely on the bench again. ‘There is no secret about it. I have been enjoying the hospitality of an old acquaintance of my master’s, a retired centurion from the eighth Augusta. He has a handsome villa just outside Glevum, further down this road. We stayed there briefly on our journey south-’
I interrupted. ‘Ah!’ A tiny piece of mosaic which had refused to fit the pattern slipped neatly into place. ‘I wondered where Felix spent the night before he came to Glevum. I thought for a moment that he had stayed here, in that house he rented — but once I got here I saw that was impossible. It was early in the morning when I met him in Glevum. He would have needed the horses of Jupiter to have travelled from here in that time.’