Aulus was watching me. ‘They used to meet,’ he told me, a salacious smile touching his lips, ‘whenever Crassus did not need their services. That was not often, but sometimes he did leave the villa overnight, to attend a banquet, or a gaming feast.’
‘At night?’ I said. ‘Surely the gates are locked?’
‘They are. Anyone coming to the villa would have to knock and wake me. But anyone could unlock the back gate from inside and slip out unobserved. They do not even have to pass this window to do it. But of course, on those occasions I was always awake, waiting for Crassus to come home. They did not know I saw them, but I did. They used to slip up the old lane. Going to the abandoned roundhouse, I imagine. I’ve seen soldiers go that way occasionally with their women, presumably for the same purpose.’
‘Risky,’ I said. ‘It’s a fair step from the villa.’
He shrugged. ‘I would not choose it. The place is dangerous and it stinks. Crassus used to use it for the animals, but it is too ruined even for that. But — where else is there? It is not too far, and it is well out of sight of the villa.’
He was right about that. There is very little privacy for a slave inside a villa, though they must have risked a thrashing if Crassus suspected. I said so.
Aulus smirked. ‘I think Crassus did suspect, but he found other ways to stop them. He always enjoyed that. Choosing the punishment to fit the victim. He fenced off the roundhouse and had the roof pulled in. Said there had been beggars sleeping there. And took Rufus to every banquet with him after that, as well. Though that was all. Rufus has been. . grateful. . for my silence.’
He looked so gloatingly pleased with himself that I felt the need to leave before I lost my temper and one of us got hurt. It would almost certainly be me.
‘I think I will take a look at this roundhouse,’ I said. ‘It may hold the answer to our mystery. Anyone might have hidden there on the day of the feast and murdered Crassus on his return.’
Aulus sneered. ‘It would be difficult. How would they get to the hypocaust? The villa gates were locked and I had the key. Anyway the aediles had the roundhouse searched, and they found nothing — except fleas. I told you — Crassus used it for the animals.’
‘All the same,’ I said, ‘I think I will take a look.’
I went out into the lane. However much the roundhouse stank, I thought, it could not be worse than the stench of stale onions and oafish self-satisfaction.
Chapter Six
I was wrong, as I discovered when I got there. Things could smell a great deal worse.
It had taken me some time to reach the roundhouse. The lane was steep, and even when I got there I had to pick my way to the entrance. There was a path of sorts, but the old neat enclosure had fallen into disrepair, the outer ditch and wall had both collapsed and the inner compound had all but disappeared under bushes, thistles, grasses and young trees. The building itself was little more than a ruin. What nature had begun, Crassus had completed by pulling down most of the roof, so that what remained offered little protection against the wind and rain and only then if one huddled under the fallen thatch near what had been the door. The only thing still standing was the smell.
It was a strange smell, compounded of damp straw, rotting vegetation and animal droppings, and a horrible odour of corruption which I eventually traced to a pile of old fish-heads under the fallen thatch. There was an old dark patch on the earth floor besides, where some unfortunate creature had once been slaughtered bloodily, and there was a general ambience of pigs. Hardly a welcoming habitation, and although a pile of bedding straw had been raked together in the one place of shelter, it was dirty, rumpled and damp. I remembered what Aulus had said about beggars sleeping here.
And this was the only place that Rufus and his lady could find to be alone. I felt a twinge of sympathy. It was hardly a senatorial palace, even for Crassus’ hogs.
Yet, ruined as it was, the building revived memories in me. I had not been in a Celtic roundhouse since they had dragged me, at sword-point, away from my own almost thirty years ago, and there was a strange bitter sweetness in visiting one again. Mine was a little bigger, of course, but otherwise no different. A Celtic chief measures his wealth, not in draughty corridors, but in the beauty and workmanship of his possessions, in music and song and the loyalty of his people. In just such a house was I born, and to such a house I brought my bride. I could picture as if it were before me the central fire, giving off its cheerful smoky heat, while something bubbled deliciously in the blackened pot. I could see the women huddled around it, weaving cloth and plaiting baskets, the dog basking by the hearth, one ear already cocked for the returning menfolk, while a lad — it might have been myself — struck music from a little harp and sang the old, sad, proud songs of my youth.
I was accustomed, now, to Roman ways: to stone walls and floors, latrines and drains and aqueducts, to braziers and fullered linen. But there was a part of me which remembered, with regret, an older, wilder, less directed life, when a man’s time and land and labour were his own, without patronage or taxes, and a woman who needed an extra room could weave one out of osiers in an afternoon. Of course, there were drawbacks too, pirate raids and dirt and draughts, but all the same I felt a disagreeable tingling behind my eyes. There were so many things a man had to forget, so many compromises to make, simply to stay alive. I was proud to be a freedman now, but I had been freer, and prouder, then.
But this was no time for morbid introspection. I had come here for a purpose. I broke a stick from a tree nearby and scratched about in the straw, though not with any great hope of discovering anything. I found the fleas — or rather, they found me. I obviously represented their first square meal since the arrival of the aediles, and I wondered fleetingly what they lived on when I wasn’t there. Something, obviously, since there were plenty of them. I could see nothing else, however, and was about to give up when my stick dislodged something small and metallic among the straw.
I bent forward to retrieve it.
It was a single, small piece of hammered metal, thin and worn and shaped like a fishscale with a small hole in one end. I knew what it was. A piece of scale armour, like the ones on Crassus’ shirt.
Yet it had not come from Crassus’ shirt. I had examined that only an hour ago and it was undamaged. Anyway, I asked myself, what would Crassus be doing here, in the resort of pigs and beggars? So, where had it come from? One of Aulus’ amorous soldiers perhaps? Or from some imperial conspirator? Whatever it was, Marcus would have to be told. I slipped the piece of metal into the pouch inside my belt, and sighed. The more I saw of this business, the less I liked it.
There was nothing else to be found and I made my way back to the villa. Aulus was waiting for me.
‘There you are, citizen. Did you find the ruin?’
‘I did.’ I wanted to avoid further intimacy with the onions, but he was ushering me into his room again. I made a bid for escape. ‘I must speak to Rufus. What is he like, this man?’
‘Hardly a man.’ Aulus preened, relishing the opportunity to impart information. ‘He is small, red-headed, young. He is the lute player. You must have seen him. Freeborn, but poor, although so proud you’d think he was of patrician blood. He was sold into slavery by his parents, for ten years.’
I nodded. It was not unknown. Parents too poor to support their children sometimes sold them into slavery for a fixed term, especially if they had a talent, like Rufus. Usually they hoped the child would get manumission at the end and citizenship with it, but Rufus had had the misfortune to be bought by Crassus.
‘He will be lucky to escape when his contract ends,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Aulus agreed. ‘At least, that was true yesterday. Now, I suppose, he will be given to Lucius. That will ensure his contract is honoured. Lucius might even free him at once — unless he has use for lute players in his hermit’s cell.’