Marcus nodded. ‘He is delighted. I saw him at the bathhouse yesterday and he was telling me of it. The finest paved courtyard in the Insula Britannica he says. He will pay you well.’
‘Thanks to you, excellence.’
Marcus fiddled with his seals. ‘But, Libertus, I have need of your advice. You remember Crassus?’
‘Crassus? Crassus Claudius Germanicus?’ That was a foolish question. What other Crassus could it possibly be? Another recent commission which Marcus had secured for me. ‘Is he satisfied with the pavement in his new. . librarium?’ I hesitated deliberately over the word, and glanced at Marcus.
It was rather daring of me. Crassus was a Roman citizen and a wealthy one too. As a retired centurion from an auxiliary regiment he had earned his citizenship on retirement, as all conscript officers did after twenty-five years. He was looked down on, of course, by the ‘old blood’ but having acquired a thick skin along with his considerable fortune, he had bought up a tract of land near Glevum and built himself a villa to equal that of any patrician ex-legionary. A boor and a bully he might be, but the man had money and status and it was not for me to question it if he chose to call that tiny cell a ‘librarium’ simply because he had acquired half-a-dozen manuscripts in pots. Marcus heartily disliked the man, but my irony risked a rebuke.
I was safe. Marcus was laughing. He said, ‘It was absurd. Crassus paid such a price for those manuscripts, but if one had given him laundry lists for the fullers, copied out on vellum, he would have been just as pleased with them. I presume the man went to school, like everyone else, but I am sure he never learned to read more than the company orders, and never opened a scroll for pleasure in his life. But he was very determined on his librarium pavement, I seem to recall.’
I nodded. Marcus wasn’t really asking me, he had been present himself when the mosaic was ordered.
‘Wanted it in a hurry, too,’ Marcus went on, ‘before his brother should visit. Did you manage to finish it in time?’
‘I did. I finished it a fortnight ago. He professed himself very satisfied.’ I did not add that I was never more pleased to finish a pavement in my life. I had scarcely seen my employer, of course, one rarely did on these commissions, but the whole household lived in terror of their master, and the once or twice I had glimpsed him myself had certainly sufficed. Crassus Claudius Germanicus was a singularly unpleasant man.
‘Ah.’ Junio had appeared with the tray, and Marcus took a goblet absently, and waited without glancing at the boy until it was filled. He sipped it appreciatively. ‘A fair wine. Roman, is it? You didn’t buy this from the market sellers.’
‘Your gift, excellence.’
I took my goblet in turn, and sipped at it, though I had never learned to like the sour taste of wine. I preferred mead, or the honest ale or apple-beer of my youth. I waited, but Marcus said nothing more until Junio had disappeared. I was surprised. Marcus — brought up with a household of slaves — usually ignored the presence of servants.
Not on this occasion. Marcus watched him go. ‘That slave of yours,’ he said coolly, ‘can you trust him?’
‘Implicitly,’ I said. ‘I would trust him with my life.’ That was true. I have done so, in fact, on several occasions.
‘Because,’ Marcus went on, as if I had not spoken, ‘it may be necessary for you to be absent for a day or two, and people may be asking for you. Friends, clients, acquaintances. .’
I sighed inwardly. Not for my friends; a native nobleman who has been captured as a slave and been cut off from his family does not acquire many friends. But I had ‘advised’ Marcus before, and I was aware that his ‘day or two’ was more likely to be at least a week. That was the price one paid for having a wealthy patron. So much for Corinium, I thought, and there was still that pavement of Didio’s to be completed.
I managed a tight smile. ‘There may be customers, certainly.’
‘Well, you know what Glevum is, Libertus. Rumours everywhere, and this is one occasion when I would prefer that your movements were not the subject of public gossip. Perhaps your slave could tell callers that you are away. . have left town, on urgent business perhaps.’
My mind was racing. I did indeed know Glevum. Garrison for the local guard-force, and the chosen retirement place for every wealthy ex-legionary in the business. A model of Roman local government, and therefore, naturally, a hotbed of political and social undercurrents of all kinds.
I looked at Marcus warily. ‘That could be arranged. And Caius Didio? He will be anxious about his mosaic.’ I meant that I was anxious about it myself.
‘Leave him to me,’ Marcus said.
I nodded. I could guess now why Marcus had come to see me, and I did not like what I guessed. I did not like it at all. I had first met Marcus after the death of a wealthy landowner nearby, a politically sensitive matter, which I investigated for him, and since then Marcus had always turned to me when he discovered some ‘accident’ or fraud which appeared to compromise the dignity of Rome. My help in these matters, he always says, first earned me his protection and patronage, and my refusal to ask for money won his respect. I had an uncomfortable feeling, now, that I was about to be given another opportunity to win his respect.
‘There is trouble, excellence?’ I prompted, hoping that my dismay was not written in my face.
If so, Marcus was too preoccupied to read it. ‘Trouble, yes. You are perceptive. It concerns Crassus. The aediles have been to see me.’
‘The aediles? The junior magistrates?’ For a moment, I turned cold. The aediles were concerned with commercial matters, and they could be ruthless. Marcus had many enemies amongst the market informers. They would enjoy making ‘an example’ of his protégé. I swallowed the rest of my wine in one gulp, before I could trust my voice to say, ‘Has Crassus complained of me?’
I had reason to be wary. That pavement which Crassus had wanted laid with such indecent speed had not been of my own design nor even worked from a pattern book. I had been encouraging Junio to learn the art of pavement-making, and this was a small mosaic of his: a rather crude Cave Canem mounted on linen backing, a sort of apprentice-piece. When Crassus Germanicus had wanted an almost-instant pavement, it was that mosaic — with the lettering quickly altered from Beware of the Dog to Art is Long — which I had hastily cemented into place in his librarium.
‘Has he complained of me?’ I asked again. It had seemed amusingly ironic at the time, that ravening dog gracing the floor of the so-called reading-room; Crassus even seemed particularly pleased with it. But suddenly it seemed much less funny. ‘It was pre-patterned work, but it was the only way to manage it in such a short time. He wanted the floor finished and ready in weeks.’ I was gabbling in self-defence. ‘It took me almost the whole time to flatten and prepare the place. The slaves had dug it over roughly and brought in a fresh layer of clean soil — it had been the slavegirls’ room, you remember, and the floor was just trodden earth — but the floor was still hopelessly uneven. I had only enough time to roll out the mosaic and make it fit by adding an extra border at one end.’
Marcus inclined his head. ‘No, he has not complained. On the contrary, he was bragging about it in the marketplace. You did well to finish it at all, especially with an additional border. I don’t know how you managed.’
By using a template for the border pattern, was the answer — cutting the shape in wood and tiling up to it, and then filling in the space — but I wasn’t going to tell him that. It had taken me a long time to work out a usable system, and it was a secret I guarded jealously. One day, perhaps, I would tell Junio. But not yet. In the meantime I was content to allow myself to breathe out. I had been holding my breath ever since Marcus mentioned the aediles.