'Suit yourself.' I was in no mood for paranormal crackpots. When in pain, I tend towards the pedantic. 'Tell me, spirit, whose corpse do you represent?' 'I used to be called Zoilus.' I closed my eyes. I was a sensible man. I had an urgent job to do. The Furies must really be bearing a grudge today, if the spiteful ones – sorry, ladies, the kindly ones – had stuck me here, talking to a ghost. Wincing, I forced myself upright. I took a few hops to firm ground, where I tested my ankle. Somehow, the spirit of Zoilus had jumped down from the tomb; he bobbed up in front of me. He was still waiting for me to react in fright, and I still wasn't having it. Twilight had descended. By some trick he could have learned in a theatre, he seemed unearthly, wavering around me, his shifting white robes luminescent; only a pale orb that was almost without features lurked in his hood where his face should be. This ghost was light on his feet. In fact he did not seem to have any feet. He had mastered a smooth glide as if he floated several inches off the ground.
'Hoo! Hoo! Give me the fare for Charon!' So that was his game. I felt better for knowing. His squeaky tone was wheedling now, like any human beggar. 'Help me pay the ferryman, master.'
He had gone to more trouble with his story than most supplicants do, so I fetched out a coin and promised him the fee to cross the Styx if he would tell me whether he had seen a barbarian woman roaming friendless and solitary like him. He let out a shriek. I jumped. 'Death! Death! Bringer of death,' wailed the pallid sprite – rather pointlessly, if Zoilus was already deceased.
Could he know about the decapitation of Gratianus Scaeva? Had the murder at the Quadrumatus villa become the latest hot news among the shades in Hades? Had Scaeva's soul rushed there after his violent death, indignantly protesting? Were the bored spirits now flocking together to hear this news, all twittering with faded voices in Pluto's underworld forum – by Pluto, why was I messing about on a lonely road all day, when I could just ask this spook to help me out: get him to ask Scaeva's ghost, Hoo-oo did you in then?
I offered the coin. He did not take it. Whether unburied dead or simply restless, half-demented human, Zoilus darted away from me, rapidly executing that liquid glide backwards. Then he vanished. He must have jumped behind a tomb, yet it seemed as if he folded himself up and slipped into the very air, becoming bodiless and invisible. I called out. Nobody answered.
He had left me for a reason. As he slithered away into nothing, at last I encountered the runaway slaves. A scatter of them rose from the ground silently around me. I looked frantically for Clemens and Sentius, but they were nowhere. I was alone and unarmed, with dusk closing in. Zoilus had been more of an irritation than a threat; now that he was gone, I yearned for his crazy presence.
I had new companions, and I was even less happy. As the dark figures gathered in number, I remembered Petronius' sombre words of warning. If these beings could scare off a ghost, or a man who believed he was a ghost, I had reason to feel genuinely frightened.
XXV
There was no point in this errand if I now simply gave them the nod and escaped on my way. I took the initiative. I walked up to the man who looked mildest-mannered and, not getting too close, I addressed him. After a long pause while he assessed me, he agreed to talk.
The refugee I had chosen had once been a slave, trained as an architect. He had worked for a master he liked, but on the master's sudden death the heirs sold him off to a new owner, a coarse, violent bully, from whose house he had fled. The runaway was quiet, educated, spoke both Latin and Greek, presumably could read, write, calculate and draw, and had once run projects: giving instructions, controlling the finances, getting things done.
Now he was destitute and alone. I thought he carried the aura of the dying.
When I met him that evening, he was about to walk into Rome, seeking food and any available shelter. He carried a light, loosely rolled blanket. His world was desolate and secret. If he were to be apprehended and identified as a runaway slave, the finder had twenty days to return him to his master, or else be liable to prosecution for theft of another man's property: valuable property, in view of this slave's education. If a finder returned such lost property to his master, a good reward might be paid. If the finder failed to return the slave, he would be swingeingly fined. 'Can you seek refuge anywhere?' 'In a temple. Then – if, while clinging to an altar, I can persuade them to believe I was seriously ill-treated – I may be sold on to a new master. ' 'With all the risks.' 'With all the risks,' he agreed, dull and defeated. After he first ran away, he had managed well enough for a time. A vagrant who lived in a deserted building had let him share shelter, but he woke one night and the other man was trying to rape him. He escaped from that only with difficulty, and was badly beaten up. Then he struggled on his own. He begged, he searched for scraps, he slept under bridges or in doorways in the city. Beggars he met around a brazier under an aqueduct one night gave him wine, either too many swigs on an empty stomach or the liquor was doctored. They battered him senseless and stole everything he had. He had ended up naked, wounded and terrified.
Now we moved. Unwilling to stand still in one place any longer, he began restlessly walking. I followed. He kept talking in torrents, as if his story needed to be told before he vanished from life altogether. He shifted about; perhaps movement eased his aches or made him forget the pangs of hunger.
He told how he had found refuge in a public park. Two men who lived in a broken handcart under an oleander bush helped him recover and find a new tunic. I gathered they probably stole the tunic for him. Barefoot, he survived, but had lost his confidence, and came to live here outside the city, nervous that if he stayed anywhere in Rome he would be set upon while he slept. He had found occasional work hawking clothes-pegs or pies, but it was a poor living anyway, then the middleman who organised the street-tray sellers took most of the profits and, knowing their workers were desperate and outside the law, cheated them whenever possible. The refugee's wild appearance and dirty clothes, such as they were, prevented him getting other work. When he had had a stroke of luck and found some money in the street, he bought stolen goods to sell on, but was even cheated by the thieves, who had shown him attractive vases but swapped them secretly and passed him worthless bundles instead, so he lost the cash he had found and felt betrayed.
Out here, he slept up by day, then roamed in the city. At night, everywhere was more dangerous – above all, there was the risk of being arrested by the vigiles – but there was more rubbish to scavenge and less chance that some 'respectable' citizen would spot him and turn him in. Suspected runaways were hauled before the Prefect of
Vigiles, their descriptions were circulated, and their old masters had the right to reclaim them. All options were bad. Once a runaway was restored to a bullying owner, harsh beatings and other cruel treatment were inevitable. If no one came forward, a runaway would become a public slave; that meant back-breaking construction work, cleaning latrines, or crawling into cramped, smoky hypocausts to clean out ashes. It could even lead to transportation to the mines. I knew about slavery in the mines. Few survived.
This man was on a downward spiral. Starvation and cold were killing him, helped by lack of joy and loss of hope. He was thin. His complexion was grey. He had a bloody cough that would take him out in months. I told him to go to the Temple of Жsculapius, but he rejected that for some reason. 'You know they look after slaves?' 'Oh they come around and tend people on the streets.' He spoke in an odd tone, as if he despised the temple's staff. Clearly he had no trust in kindness. Whatever you think of architects, he must have been rational once to have done the job for his first master. Deprivation had stopped him thinking; he could no longer help himself It almost seemed as if he no longer wanted to.