‘The latest news,’ I muttered, as Virilis disappeared from sight. ‘Including the fact that I’ve lost Minimus, no doubt.’ The encounter had not pleased me very much and I trudged on with a frown. Maximus, I noticed, was doing much the same.
Junio, perhaps in an attempt to lift the mood, said very earnestly, ‘Then we must find Minimus as quickly as we can. Or news of him at least.’
‘That may not be possible,’ I muttered gloomily.
‘Then it is doubly important that you find out what you can. If you can prove the rebels have him, Marcus himself will see that they are caught and punished as severely as the law allows. So let’s go over everything you know — up to the moment when he disappeared.’
‘Again? I told you yesterday.’
‘There may be some detail which you did not realize was important at the time, but which you remember when you tell the tale again. Isn’t that what you always say when you are asking questions of witnesses yourself, Father?’
He was right, of course. There was not much to tell him, but I did my best. ‘He simply wasn’t there when I returned,’ I finished.
Junio frowned. ‘But he was clearly still there after you had gone. He was seen by the turnip-man sitting on his stool by the workshop counter, awaiting customers?’
‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘And I haven’t found anyone who saw him leave his post. Though he went in a hurry: he’d left his knuckle-bones.’
‘Excuse me, masters, but he wouldn’t have done that if he could have helped it,’ Maximus’s voice piped up from the rear. I had forgotten that he was listening to all this. ‘It took him months of haggling with the kitchen slaves to get a perfect set — he could not go out to the butcher’s stall, of course, to find them for himself. He was very proud of them. They were almost the only objects that he really owned.’
Junio, who had been a child-slave himself, looked rather grim at this. ‘So he would not have left them willingly?’
‘Not unless there was some crisis and he was called away. He would have put his duty even before his knuckle-bones,’ Maximus replied, then added wistfully, ‘At least I think he would.’
‘Which brings us back to the attack on Lucius, and the message yesterday,’ I said. The lane was considerably steeper here and I was rather out of breath. I took the opportunity to take a little rest, by pausing to add thoughtfully, ‘And the idea that Minimus witnessed the assault and sent the messenger, thinking that it was me that was attacked? But why on earth should he have thought that it was me?’
‘We’ve been through this before. Lucius was wearing your old tunic at the time, and from the back he might have looked like you.’
‘Only at a considerable distance,’ I replied. ‘And why would Minimus have left the shop in any case, unless somebody forced him?’
‘Which is exactly where we started,’ Junio said, walking briskly on again. ‘Perhaps we should try to find the urchin who brought the message to the house. At the very least he could tell us who sent him. I suppose it is possible that we could find him in the streets.’
‘But we don’t know what he looks like,’ I objected, toiling uphill after him. ‘None of us was actually at the roundhouse when he came.’
‘So we’ll have to ask around. There are always gaggles of pauper children who hang around the town, hoping to make an as or two by carrying people’s purchases or taking messages. More than likely he was one of them. We could make enquiries,’ Junio went on. ‘Even if he wasn’t, they might know who he was and be glad to earn a quadrans by finding him for us. It was a longish errand. No doubt it was the subject of gossip yesterday.’
I nodded. ‘Someone must have paid the urchin fairly handsomely or promised him more coin when he returned. Otherwise he would not have come so far or run so fast,’ I muttered breathlessly, thinking of my own attempt to send a messenger to Gwellia the day before, when a quadrans apparently had not been enough. ‘And that would hardly have been Minimus, whatever Cilla thinks. He would not have had the wherewithal.’
‘But the boy was promised payment on delivery,’ Junio pointed out. ‘That would make a kind of sense.’
‘But if Minimus had sent him,’ I said, gloomily determined to support the other view, ‘why didn’t the messenger say so at the time?’
‘The women thought he did,’ my son reminded me. ‘I only wish our wives had thought to ask a little more. I suppose that they were so concerned about your safety that they thought of nothing else but getting to Glevum as quickly as they could. Speaking of which, here we are ourselves.’
We had turned the final corner as he spoke, and the southern gatehouse was indeed in view. As if by common instinct, we all increased our pace.
‘You talk to the sentry, father, and I’ll go over there and see if those loitering urchins have anything to tell,’ Junio said briskly. ‘We’ll meet inside the gate — or I’ll see you at the workshop if anything turns up and I have to go and find the messenger.’
I nodded. ‘Send Maximus if there’s anything to report.’ I strode off in the direction of the guard.
He was standing stock-still at his post, idly watching people entering the town — looking out for beggars and known fugitives, I suppose — and he scarcely glanced at me as I approached the gate. He was a surly-looking fellow, with a barrel-chest and a general appearance of being bored and hot in his heavy helmet and metal uniform. So it was with some trepidation and a feeble smile that — instead of passing meekly through the arch and scuttling away, like the woman ahead of me with the basket of gathered watercress — I went up to him.
‘Excuse me, sentry-man.’
He turned and looked me slowly up and down. I was still wearing my toga from the morning’s feast, which marked me as a Roman citizen, but his inspection clearly left him unimpressed. ‘Well?’ he demanded.
The brusqueness took my surprise. ‘Well, it’s like this,’ I said, so non-plussed that I was almost gabbling. ‘I have lost a slave — a small red-headed lad. I think he has been stolen and I want to know if anyone was seen yesterday dragging him away, or if there’s been a slave-trader through here who might have had a boy of that description chained among his wares.’
I waited for an answer but all he said was ‘Hmmmph!’ He was still looking at me with something like contempt, and I added swiftly, ‘The slave concerned did not belong to me but to my patron, Marcus Septimus.’
The mention of my patron had one effect at least. The square face creased in an unpleasant smile. ‘Then I’m glad that I‘m not standing in your sandals, citizen. But I cannot help you. I have seen nothing since I came on watch.’ He said this with a certain gleefulness, but at any rate I had prompted him to speech. Indeed, he added a moment afterwards, ‘But if you are looking for a small red-haired page, I suppose the one behind you is not the one you mean?’
I whirled round with sudden foolish hope, but, of course, it was only little Maximus waiting patiently at a distance for me to notice him.
I indicated that he had permission to approach. ‘The young master says to tell you that it was not one of them,’ the slave-boy said, giving me a conspiratorial smile to show he was being deliberately oblique. ‘But there is a girl who thinks she might know who it was — she heard him talking earlier about the long walk he’d had. She’s going to take us to him. The young master says he’ll meet you at the workshop later on.’
I nodded, and he trotted off again, obviously enjoying the sentry’s bafflement.
I turned back to the guard and was about to say, with what dignity I could, that the missing slave had been acquired to be a matching pair with this when a voice from the gatehouse hailed me heartily.
‘Pavement-maker, I want a word with you!’