I let him have the coin. He didn’t test it this time, just hid it where he had put the other one.
Junio laid an urgent hand upon my arm. ‘So that may be your answer, father. Either that or the other messenger knew the forest well, in which case he might have taken a short cut through the woods. Perhaps we’ll never know. Is it significant?’
‘It might help us judge exactly when the false messenger was sent.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Whoever sent him must have done so very early on, while you were visiting the pie-seller’s mother, perhaps. Certainly not long after-’ I gave a warning cough and he broke off in dismay.
I shook my head at him, and he had the grace to blush. He was obviously about to mention Lucius’s corpse, and we didn’t want the urchin learning about that.
‘. . after you parted company with the turnip-seller,’ he finished lamely, signalling with his eyes that I’d stopped him just in time.
I turned to the skinny little messenger, who was smoothing his filthy tunic round his knees again, as though that might offer more protection against the threat of rain. ‘Which brings us to another matter. Would you care to earn another coin?’
The boy looked rather doubtful. ‘You want me to go running all that way again?’
I laughed. ‘No, this time it is something rather different. I spoke just now about a turnip-seller. Do you know the man?’
‘The fat one who comes to Glevum once or twice a week, selling his turnips from a handbarrow?’ He gave a brief unflattering account. ‘We egentes call him “Turnip-head”.’
I nodded briefly. ‘That seems to be the one.’
‘You want me to find out where he is and take a message?’ The urchin gave me a calculating sideways look. ‘That might take a little time. I haven’t seen him on the streets today, and if he’s on his turnip farm, I hear that’s miles away.’
‘But you do know where it is?’
‘Not exactly, but I could very soon find out. I know a market stall that he occasionally supplies — I think the man who runs it must be a relative, because sometimes the turnip-seller rides home in their cart. I’m sure the market-trader could direct me to the place.’ He flashed his blackened teeth in a triumphant grin. ‘Might cost you another as or two for me to go that far, of course.’
I made a swift decision. ‘Of course. So I shall not require you to go. But bring me the stallholder within half an hour, before. .’ — I glanced up, but it was already drizzling and there was no way I could estimate the time from the position of the sun. So I improvised — ‘. . before the rain fills up that pothole in the road, and you will get your quadrans. Is that understood?’
The boy was a little disappointed, I could see — he had been looking forward to a larger tip — but he nodded glumly. ‘You don’t want me to look for Turnip-head himself? He may be in the town. I saw him yesterday — just a little while before you came along. Though, come to think of it, until I saw his face I didn’t realize who it was — he seemed to have some kind of half-built pavement on his. .’ He brightened. ‘Oh, I suppose that it was yours, and that is why you want to send a message to him now? Wouldn’t it be easier to have me bring him here? The stallholder might not want to come until the market shuts, and by that time I could have found old Turnip-head himself.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think you could. As it happens, I know where he is and you will not find him on the streets today. Bring me the stallholder and that will suffice. Tell him that it’s urgent — there’s been an accident. Now,’ I added, seeing that he was still havering, ‘that’s all you need to know. I’ve offered you an errand. Do you accept or not?’
‘Oh, I accept,’ the urchin said, ‘though it’ll take a long time for the rain to fill that hole. You can already see that it drains away as soon as it arrives.’ He gave an impudent, triumphant smirk and started off at once, skirting the piles of dampening hides outside the tanner’s house.
I turned to Maximus, who had been looking increasingly perplexed.
‘I am sorry, master,’ he began, ‘I brought you the wrong boy. If I’d known, I could have brought you the stallholder instead. Why didn’t you send me back there, instead of using him?’
I looked at him wryly. ‘Would you know which stallholder it was?’
He saw the force of this. His freckled cheeks turned pink and he bit his lower lip. Then he said, to cover his discomfiture, ‘But what’s all this about the turnip-man? Is he the one that had the accident? Is that the explanation for the other messenger?’ His voice was so shrill with embarrassment that a passing oatcake-seller turned to look at us, balancing his tray of increasingly soggy goodies on his head. I was suddenly conscious of Virilis’s warning about spies.
I took the little slave-boy very gently by the arm. ‘You’d better come inside,’ I murmured. ‘There’s something here that you don’t know about.’
Twenty
When Maximus saw the body on the floor, he turned so deathly white I thought that he would faint. It was a ghastly spectacle, it’s true, but the strength of this reaction shocked and startled me. As I’d said to Radixrapum himself the day before, there are worse sights at the side of every road. And my slave had not even known the turnip-seller.
Perhaps he had never seen a strangled man before and he was less accustomed to the sight of murdered men than I had come to be. But I was startled to see him shaking like a willow leaf. ‘Maximus?’ I murmured.
He came across and almost huddled close to me, as though tempted to bury his face in my toga hems, like the child he was. He did not speak. I realized that he was close to vomiting with fright.
I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I am not surprised that this distresses you. But try to compose yourself; we may require your help.’
Maximus looked up at me. His face was taut with fear. ‘You think that the people who did this have kidnapped Minimus?’
So that was it! Of course, I should have guessed. He did not know what I had discovered about his fellow slave’s fate!
I crouched down beside him and looked into his face. ‘I promise you, Minimus is safe from this, at least,’ I said. ‘He is somewhere in the colonia under lock and key, accused of robbery and awaiting trial.’
It was strange information to make him so relieved. ‘So he is safe?’
‘Comparatively so.’ I owed the lad the truth. ‘They found him with incriminating evidence, it appears. He may have been ill-treated to force him to confess, but almost certainly he is alive.’
‘That will be pretty grim, but I suppose it’s better than being questioned by brigands in the woods,’ Junio chimed in. ‘Can we arrange to see him and help with his defence? Could Quintus be persuaded to admit us, do you think? I assume it was Quintus who arrested him? I heard what you were saying to Virilis at the door.’
I realized that this was true. He’d heard what I had told the cursor, and he’d made what seemed an obvious inference. I struggled to my feet again to ease my aching knees, but my heart was heavy with the news I had to break.
‘It wasn’t Quintus who arrested him,’ I supplied, flapping rather ineffectually at my tunic hems, which now bore the marks of stone and plaster from the floor. ‘Or the town watch, either,’ I added dismally, as well-trained Maximus hastened to assist, kneeling at my feet to brush my garments properly.
‘So it must have been the troops,’ Junio said at once. He glanced triumphantly at me, looking for me to commend him on his skill for thinking logically. ‘Well, Father, you know the commander of the garrison, and Marcus Septimus has some sway with him, so if they’re the ones who’ve got him locked away, it should be easy for you to. .’ He tailed off, looking at my face. ‘Not the garrison. .?’