But Junio was still trying to follow what I’d said. ‘So when Virilis knew the coast was clear he came back to the shop and lay in wait for you? He must have spent a long time hiding close nearby. He might have been discovered — that was dangerous.’
‘Not for Virilis. He hid himself by visiting the tannery next door, pretending to be interested in buying hides. The tanner told me he’d had a customer with a jewelled cloak-clasp, and, of course, the cursor had one with a ruby set in it. I only saw the implication when it was far too late.’
‘Speaking of lateness,’ Scowler’s voice broke in. ‘I’m due off duty soon. Besides, you are supposed to be under my arrest. Come along, citizen, or I’ll have to draw my sword.’
‘I’m coming,’ I told him and made to follow him.
‘But, Father,’ Junio bleated, ‘suppose that you are wrong? Or the steward just denies that Minimus is there? Or locks me up as well!’
‘The steward thinks our slave-boy is a criminal and that he is holding him until he can be tried. Tell him that armed soldiers are already on their way, to take Minimus into official custody,’ I answered. ‘I’ll talk to the commander and try to make it true.’
Scowler pushed his helmet back and scratched his head again. ‘If it’s worth another half-denarius, I will make it true myself. As I say, I am off duty soon. Give me a few minutes and I’ll follow this young citizen. I’ll bring the slaveboy back to the guardhouse, if we find him there. If we have a bargain, that is, citizen?’
‘We have a bargain, soldier,’ I told him thankfully. ‘You bring the lad back safe and I’ll pay twice as much.’
So I let him march me towards the garrison while Junio scuttled off to find the bearers and the chair.
Twenty-Six
Even then it was not as easy as I’d hoped that it would be. There was no problem with my being charged, but my request to see the garrison commander was refused. He was very busy, the optio on duty told me with a sneer, trying to trace the owner of a murdered slave whose body had been discovered in the woods.
‘Hardly a matter for the senior officer,’ I said.
‘Depends what you believe. The commander seems to think the rebels are involved and that the boy was being used to carry messages. Nasty business: the brutes had strangled him.’
A strangled slave-boy! I felt my blood run cold. I took a swift decision. ‘It may be that I can help. Did this slave-boy have red hair by any chance? And a light-blue tunic?’
The soldier shook his head. ‘Not as far as I know. Scruffy little thing. We thought he was a street urchin, but he’d got a brand on him. Possibly a land slave, it says in the report. Dark-brown tunic and big boots. Nobody mentioned the colour of his hair.’
I got up from the wooden form where they had made me sit. (If I hadn’t been a citizen, it would have been the floor.) ‘Then I believe I do know who it is. And I know who owns him — or I think I do.’
He looked up from the written orders he was looking at. ‘And who would that be?’
‘Pedronius the tax-collector, if I am correct. I think this used to be a garden slave of his, though I believe that the boy’s been out on loan. To Quintus Severus, I think that you will find.’
The optio shuffled his bark sheets aside. ‘Then I’d wish you’d been here earlier. It would have saved a lot of time. It’s taken the commander half the afternoon to find out that it was the tax-collector’s slave brand. It seems you do know something. You’d better come with me.’
He led the way into the inner court and up the staircase to where the commander’s private office was. When we were summoned in answer to our knock, the optio pushed me in ahead of him, then stood stiffly to attention in the middle of the room. There was a smell of armour polish, lamp fat, sweat and grease.
‘In the name of his Imperial Divinity. .’ the optio began.
The commander waved these formalities aside. ‘Oh, very well! Forget the formula.’ He pushed away the pile of documents before him on the desk and leaned back on his stool. These — apart from a handsome oil lamp on a stand and the shadowy statue of a deity in a niche — were the only furnishings in this spare and spartan room. ‘What is it that you want?’
‘A prisoner requesting an audience with you, sir. Brought here on a charge, but has information on that dead slave in the woods.’
The grizzled eyebrows rose an inch or two, and the commander turned a pair of weary eyes on me, but when he saw me his manner changed at once. ‘Citizen Libertus, you are here again?’ He sounded at once exasperated and amused. ‘Why is it that every time I find a corpse you are not far behind? Never mind. If you have information, I’ll be glad to hear. Optio, you may leave us.’
The soldier snapped his sandal-heels together in salute and clattered off downstairs.
‘Now, what is it?’ The commander turned to me. He was a lively, weather-beaten man, with a stern though kindly face, who took his position of command more seriously than most — he had declined a position in the senate house at Rome in favour of continuing his military career. ‘I understand that you’re a prisoner in my custody? Do you deserve it?’
‘Only for tying my toga-ends around my waist,’ I said. ‘And for discovering the truth about the chief decurion, which, incidentally, is related to that slave-boy’s corpse you found. I think you’d better hear it. If I’m correct, my patron is in danger of his life — and so am I, of course. And there may even be danger to the state.’
He leaned forward, making a spear-point of his hands. ‘Then tell me all about it — from the beginning, please.’
I told him the whole story: the fruitless visit to Pedronius’s house, the discovery of the pie-seller’s body, and how Virilis had mysteriously known the details of the face, when no one but myself and Radixrapum were supposed to have seen the corpse.
‘What about the soldiers who brought the army cart? Could one of them have told him?’ the commander asked. He was scribbling down details on a piece of wax, though he’d nearly filled the writing-block by now.
I shook my head. ‘We’d bandaged up the face. It was not visible,’ I said.
He nodded and poised his pointed stylus once again. ‘Go on.’
I went on: all about Glypto, and the message that brought my wife to town, and the appearance of Virilis at the naming day. ‘He must have been astonished to find me there,’ I said. ‘When he killed Radixrapum just the night before, he thought that he had strangled me.’
‘So both of the murders took place yesterday, and you think he moved the turnip-seller to your workshop after dark? Which means that he rode to Marcus’s villa very late indeed — though he was an expert rider, I suppose. Yet he had already been there earlier in the day, I think you said.’
‘In the morning, after he had visited the curia,’ I said. ‘And that’s another intriguing thing. Of course, the forenoon is when the council generally meets — unless it is some special session like today — but how could a messenger, riding from the west, have contrived to arrive there yesterday so early in the day, deliver a message, wait for a reply and still have time to get to the villa before noon? Even Corinium is at least two hours away, even on horseback, at this time of year.’
The commander gazed at me. ‘Meaning that he had probably spent the night nearby?’
‘I’m almost sure of it. It may have been an inn — I don’t suppose that Quintus would ask him to the house, but I expect the two made contact that evening all the same.’
‘We’ll make enquiries of all the establishments nearby.’ He scratched another sentence on his writing-block. ‘If they were seen together, that will prove you’re right. And you don’t believe the message that the cursor brought — naming Gaius Greybeard as his nominee?’
I looked at him a moment. ‘You know Marcus. What do you suppose?’
He made a wry face. ‘I was doubtful too, but eventually I concluded — as I’m sure many people did — that Gaius had offered money and Marcus had succumbed, perhaps when the candidate he really favoured refused to stand. I have seen it happen many times before.’