If I reasoned aright, Andretha was more interested in obtaining money than justice. Those all-important household accounts, I suspected, did not altogether balance. That would explain, among other things, the extravagance of the funeral preparations; no one would question the cost of an additional bottle of spikenard for anointing, for instance, or the price of an extra dormouse or two for the feast. On such small adjustments to the accounting can a man’s freedom rest.
Andretha looked at me. He raised his hands helplessly. ‘I do not know what you are suggesting, citizen. But perhaps you are right about the funeral.’ He turned to the lute player. ‘Rufus, you should be grateful to the citizen. You owe him your freedom, for tonight at least. But I shall alert the guards. Once the rites are over, we shall have our reckoning! Come!’ He hustled out of the kitchen.
Rufus followed him, throwing me a grateful glance.
I followed too, more slowly, taking a stroll with Junio around the inner garden first. If Marcus had been kept cooling his heels by Andretha, I did not wish to be visibly associated with the delay. By the time we arrived in the atrium most of the guests were assembled and Andretha was flitting amongst them like an agitated moth, overseeing the distribution of napkins and the provision of knives to those not carrying their own.
Rufus stood forward, striking up the lute, and the room fell silent. (His left cheek, I noticed, was reddening — in the distinct shape of four fingers. My intervention had not entirely saved him from Andretha’s wrath.)
Marcus led the way into the triclinium where, taking a goblet of wine from a young cupbearer, he poured out a few drops on the shrine before the lar and the penates in turn. Then he took a morsel of sweet cake and set it in front of the plinth between them, on which a seal of Crassus and a small bust of Commodus had been reverently laid. He intoned the usual invocations, scattered a pinch of salt upon the Vestal flame, and the feast began.
There were too many mourners to seat. Important people like Marcus were shown to the five couches by the low tables on the dais; we lesser mortals sat on chairs and stools, or simply stood against the wall, at the other end of the room.
‘Neatly handled,’ I muttered to Rufus as I took my place against the farthest wall. ‘Using the seal.’
‘Marcus’ suggestion,’ he returned. ‘The emperor bust is from his own travelling shrine.’ Then he was gone, to sit cross-legged on the patterned pavement, playing solemn music while the feasters ate.
There were quails’ eggs and speeches, shellfish and more speeches, the stuffed dormice were followed by yet more speeches and when, after the boiled lamb with plums (spoiled, as usual, by the inevitable fish sauce), a solemn-faced young man began: ‘O warrior and companion soul, farewell. .’ I could scarcely restrain a groan.
The man beside me must have felt the same. He gave a stifled sigh. I glanced at him. Grizzled hair, leathery skin, hands toughened with weathering and the livid scar of an old wound visible on one wrist. He wore a civilian tunic now, but this was an ex-auxiliary soldier if I ever saw one. He caught my eye and I flashed him a smile.
‘You were a friend of Crassus?’ I murmured, when the interminable ode was over and it was possible to speak again.
‘Not a friend, no. I served under him. I was a tesserarius in his century.’
‘But you knew him?’ I was interested. I remembered those rumours about Crassus’ promotion — and those soldiers in the lane.
He looked at me suspiciously.
‘I am a pavement maker,’ I explained. ‘He commissioned work from me, that is why I am here. I hardly knew him. But he has not paid me, and you know how these things work. I must seek his heirs.’
His face cleared. ‘Ah! They will be hard men, if they are like him. A brave soldier, they say, but the most brutal centurion north of the Tiber.’
‘Ambitious, too,’ I prompted. Hinting that a superior is ambitious is enough to make the average soldier gossip like a woman.
This one was no exception. ‘Ambitious? Great Mars, I should say so! Always on the look out for a ransom or a bribe, and it was always Crassus who profited, not the company. He didn’t care about his men. It was rumoured once that he killed his own commander to gain the promotion.’
I pricked up my ears, but I was disappointed.
‘It can’t be true,’ the soldier said. ‘Treachery in the field is a capital offence. But he was ruthless enough. Some said he would betray the emperor himself if the bribe was high enough.’
I thought of Aulus, and that soldier in the dusk. Every man has his price.
‘You think he might have?’
He laughed. ‘He was planning something. Some wager he had laid. He was boasting about it at the Mars procession.’
The words stopped me, honeyed date to mouth. ‘You were at the procession?’
‘Yes, I told you. I was in his century. I marched behind him. He was late. He didn’t reach the column until the signifer arrived. Too busy talking to another centurion. He had to put his mask on as he came.’
‘I see.’ So that was how Daedalus had managed it, I thought. He would have needed to see the standard to know which column to join. ‘And afterwards? Did you see him leave?’
‘Oh yes, he rushed off as quickly as he came. He was in high spirits. Someone asked him to join us in the feasting, but he would not come. He said he had just won an important wager, and hurried off towards the West Gate.’
‘Strange!’
He laughed again. ‘Yes, very strange. Usually Crassus loved a feast. It must have been a substantial sum. He seemed very pleased about it.’
‘Did he unmask?’
The man gazed at me. ‘Now you mention it, I don’t think he did. He was pulling his mask off as he went away. But it was Crassus, I would know him anywhere. I recognised his voice.’
‘And this centurion he was talking to? Did you know him too?’
‘No,’ the tesserarius said. ‘He was not from our legion. He was clearly a stranger. I assumed Crassus knew him from somewhere. It was not surprising. There were hundreds of visiting veterans in Glevum that day, in the procession and out of it. Most soldiers honour the feast of Mars.’
‘But it was a centurion,’ I insisted, ‘you are sure of that?’
‘I saw the crest,’ he replied, irritated. The transverse crest of the centurion is the badge of office. ‘And the baton.’
‘It could not, for instance, have been a disguise?’ I asked. ‘This is important. That may have been the last time Crassus was seen alive.’
‘And you think the centurion might have killed him? Over this wager perhaps? It is possible. But a disguise? I shouldn’t think so. A centurion’s uniform is heavy, and the helmet awkward, with the plume going round the head, instead of front to back. A man has to be accustomed to it to wear it well. One can often tell a new centurion from the way he holds his head.’
I had time to murmur ‘Thank you’ before there was a ripple of tambours. Marcus got to his feet and the feast was over.
What followed was a long and tedious business. The body was brought out, on its bier, and carried in procession, preceded by torches and by the professional mourners and musicians, playing, singing dolefully and dancing. Then Rufus with his lute, more mourners, wailing, and after them the guests. The household slaves walked beside them, carrying lights or braziers, while the women followed at the back. I was glad of Marcus’ litter, though it lurched appallingly. There had been little wine at the feast — a mark of austerity — but my head was buzzing, as if to remind me that I had recently been hurt. I had much to think about, too.