He went ahead of me, holding the taper high. I was not mistaken. The heavy bolt, which yesterday had been so firmly closed, was now pulled back, so that although the door rested in the same position it was no longer fastened shut. It had been carefully done — if I had glanced more casually I would never have observed it in the shadows. I exchanged looks with Scribonius.
He said nothing, but we moved in unison. We pushed at the door together and it opened at our touch. Outside under the columns, however, there were scuff-marks on the ground, as if the swinging of the door had marked it recently. I opened and shut it once again — it was moving freely enough now.
Scribonius looked at me helplessly. ‘I know what you are thinking, citizen, but you are wrong. I didn’t do this. I didn’t open the bolt, or arrange the blood, and I don’t know anything about this moving corpse at all.’
He sounded so defensive that I turned to face him. ‘I can see that someone went that way, and was unable to pull the bolt shut after them. Why should I suppose that it was you?’
He shook his head. ‘I have said too much.’
‘You have not said enough,’ I told him crisply. ‘I repeat, why should I suppose that you, in particular, might be involved in this? You must have a reason. Everyone else seems to suspect the hand of the gods.’
Scribonius glowered. ‘I think you know the reason very well. Trinunculus will have told you, if no one else. One might as well keep water in a sieve as try to keep him from spilling information. It’s perfectly clear why everyone will suppose that I have been involved. Weren’t my forefathers rebellious Iceni, executed after the rebellion and their wives and children sold?’
I gulped. So that was what Trinunculus had meant by saying that Scribonius had to be particularly careful because of his ‘background’! The famous Iceni. They had become a legend in the province — a byword among the tribes for their resistance to the Roman occupation force. The spirited rebellion under their warrior queen Boudicca had been doomed, of course, but they had torched Londinium and harried their conquerors for years, before they were finally subdued and their leaders put horribly to death. The very reprisals which had allegedly called down this curse.
‘The Iceni?’ I said inanely.
He rounded on me. ‘How do you think I came to be born a slave? My family were cultured men, minstrels and poets, generations of them — but they were herded up and those that were not tortured to death were sentenced to the mines. As I am sure you know. After all, you are a Celt yourself.’
He spoke of his inheritance with pride, and when I looked more closely at him I could see that there was Celtic blood in him, though I guessed that there were Romans somewhere in that ancestry too. Patricians, probably — the build was too slender for a Celt and the nose too long. That was not surprising, of course. Everyone knew for what purposes the Romans liked to use their female slaves. I had only to think of Gwellia to remember that.
I changed the subject hastily. ‘Do you speak Celtic?’ I enquired, using that tongue myself.
He glanced around as if the walls were listening. ‘I do not understand what you are saying, I’m afraid. I never learned to speak my native language. I was raised in a Latin-speaking household all my life. And only the highest quality of Latin too — my master was a grammarian and orator, and very strict about our speech.’ He moved a little closer, and added, in a fierce mutter, ‘And do not try to trap me, citizen. The Romans do not trust the Iceni to this day. You know that it would do me harm if I appeared to be conspiring with you in a tongue which no one else can understand.’
‘And yet you serve the Imperial cult?’ I said.
The hand that held the taper trembled a little. ‘Of course. It is the only way of proving my allegiance and having any influence at all. I was succeeding too. I had hoped, before all this. .’ He gestured towards the bloodstain on the floor. ‘I have the necessary capital, and I’ve been freed. I hoped I might rise to the equites, or that at least my son could hope to join the knights. You can’t imagine how much work I’ve put into it — ensured that nothing that I did could be construed against me, studied all the documents, learned all the correct rituals, made all the right offerings — and now, I suppose, it will all have been in vain. No emperor will look favourably on me, after this. Even if these horrors prove to be the work of the gods, I shall be suspected of somehow bringing their wrath down on the shrine — just because it was an Icenian who laid the curse. More likely someone will decide that I am actually guilty of carrying it out myself. Dear Mars. .!’
He was right, of course. The idea had even occurred to me. But he had frightened himself by voicing the thought, and there was a danger that he would lapse into silence altogether. I did my best to appear supportive.
‘So you suspect a human hand?’ I said. ‘So do I, especially now I know that door’s been opened up. The gods would hardly need to move the bolt! But if they didn’t do it, who did — that’s the question. That catch could only have been pulled back from the inside.’
‘I can’t imagine, citizen. When we left the shrine last night the place was empty. We locked the door, and opened it this morning with the key. How could anyone have slid the bolt?’ He looked around nervously. ‘Perhaps this is the doing of the gods, after all. We must have transgressed the rituals in some way.’ He did not sound convincing or convinced.
I looked around. There was still no hiding-place in the shrine that I could see. I put a hand on the statue, avoiding the sticky patch, and tried its weight. It rocked, but did not shift its position. I did the same thing to the altar stone. That brought Scribonius hurrying forward, instantly, yelping like a scalded puppy.
‘Citizen, the altar! You have defiled it with your hands.’
Of course I had. I should have thought of that. Doubly defiled it, probably, because despite my splashings in the sacred water pot my fingertips still bore traces of where I’d touched the blood.
I looked down at the stain on the floor again, and something caught my eye. There, in the shadowed recess at the altar’s foot. I felt the hairs prickle on my neck. ‘Give me that taper here,’ I whispered. My voice would hardly answer my command.
‘You should not be kneeling there.’ He was still fussing, his thin voice quivering with anxiety. ‘Not without a proper sacrifice.’
He was too late. I was already on my knees. And I did not need Scribonius’s taper to see the object which my shaking hands had found.
I held it up into the light. It was a ring. A legate’s ring. Identical to the one I’d found there, yesterday; the one I’d last seen in Trinunculus’s hands.
I stood there in the gloom, looking from the object in my hand to Scribonius. He was staring at it with a kind of fascinated horror, and little moaning noises were issuing from his lips.
‘Do you know something about this, Scribonius?’ I asked him softly.
He raised his head then and met my eyes. When he spoke, his voice was strained and high. ‘I know nothing about it, citizen, except that. .’ He glanced at the ring again, looking rather as I imagine I had looked when I put my hand down in that sticky mass. He shook his head. ‘Except. . Nothing!. .’
Faced with that kind of half-confession, I have often found that confrontation is the most efficient strategy. I tried it now. ‘You know something that you have not confessed to me! Is it about the disappearing corpse, the bloodstain, or the ring?’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘I have done nothing, citizen. But perhaps I am to blame. I am an Icenian, after all. I can’t escape from that — and perhaps that’s why these things keep happening.’ He sighed. ‘I have tried to persuade myself otherwise — that the curse could not be manifested through me without my knowing it — but even I cannot deny this evidence.’ He glanced at the ring, which I was still holding in the gloom, and looked away again as though he could not bear to see it.