But as we rounded the last corner into the central square, we met a scene that made my stomach churn.
A small crowd had gathered outside the fish-market. The worst kind of crowd. There were a few respectable cloaks and tunics among them, but for the most part they seemed to be the dirtiest and most desperate of the poor — peasants, beggars, vagabonds and thieves. They were being addressed by a man who was standing on the plinth of a statue by the road. He was largely hidden by the mob, but fragments of his impassioned speech reached my ears. ‘Root him out. . a danger to us all. . clear message from the gods. . insult to the Emperor’s shrine. . Celtic rat. . no more than he deserves.’
The crowd muttered and roared in agreement, hanging on his every syllable. He gestured to make some energetic point, and as he raised his head I caught a better glimpse of him.
I tried to flatten myself on the litter. He was too engrossed in his own oratory to notice me, but I would have known that grizzled battering ram of a head anywhere — even without the stave the speaker carried in his hand. It was the ringleader from my kitchen earlier — and he had wasted no time in finding himself an audience. This was clearly not just the crowd that had first accompanied him.
He was reaching his peroration now.
‘Are we going to find him?’ he hollered as I passed, and ‘We are!’ they all roared back.
‘This is witchcraft!’ one desperado called, and the mob took it up. ‘Stop the sorcerer! Dead or alive!’
It was a sickening moment. Witchcraft is a capital offence — it undermines the state. Whole families have been decapitated for the crime, and buried with their severed heads between their knees. And being a citizen is no defence.
I let the litter take me to the high priest’s house after all.
I was seriously uneasy by this time, especially as there was a little knot of people gathered opposite, outside Optimus’s house. These were clearly wealthy citizens, quite a few of them in Roman dress, and they stopped to watch the litter as it drew up, and I got out to pay. They were looking at me oddly, I was sure, and my heart was in my mouth when one of them nudged his companion, nodded towards me and whispered something in his ear. I was expecting to be hailed at any minute, but no one accosted me, and I reached the front door without incident.
I knocked. The slave who kept the door pulled back a wooden shutter, and looked at me for what seemed an age. Surely I was not imagining it? The man was unwilling and suspicious.
I was desperate to get inside. ‘I am the Citizen Longinus Flavius,’ I heard myself saying, afraid that somebody was listening. (It was true, in case anybody questioned it. Those are my first two official Latin names, although no one ever calls me by them.) ‘I have business with the high priest and with Marcus Aurelius Septimus.’
The doorman’s hostile expression did not waver. His eyes never left me for an instant, but after a moment’s further hesitation he opened the door at last and let me in.
‘Through there,’ he muttered ungraciously, by way of greeting. He made no attempt to call an attendant for me.
I went in the direction he had indicated, and found myself in the high priest’s atrium.
It was not a welcoming room — more like something in a public meeting hall than a private residence. I felt almost as if I had stumbled into a courtroom by mistake. It was extremely intimidating, in my agitated state.
White statues and an ornamental central pool (which must have been filled and drained by slaves — the room was, quite sensibly, roofed against the Glevum winter snows); a huge mural on the walls depicting a rather gruesome scene of white bulls being led to sacrifice; and a shrine to Jupiter in a corner niche. Beside it, through an open door, I glimpsed an even grander space beyond. Hardly a comfortable room.
But this was not a courthouse, I told myself. Merely a private atrium designed to daunt. Around the walls there ran an elaborate but extremely ugly frieze, depicting a parade of sacrificial birds, and the same pattern was repeated in the (admittedly well-laid) mosaic of the floor. It must be a strange business, I thought, practising to be Flamen Dialis all your life.
The furniture was on a massive scale as welclass="underline" all clumsy, oversized and gilt. There was a huge carved wooden bench for visitors — too high to sit comfortably upon — and a gilded table set in front of it, on which there was already a dish of unleavened bread and honeyed dates, some drinking cups, and a pitcher of what I took to be the customary watered wine. An open door led to the garden and the inner wings beyond.
I was hesitating over what to do when a small slave, who had been standing unnoticed by the wall, came forward to invite me to sit down.
‘I will try to find somebody to receive you, citizen, though I am not sure where my master is. We received an imperial messenger earlier today, and the pontifex has been closeted with the governor’s personal representative ever since. And he has problems at the temple too — as no doubt you are aware. Nevertheless, I’m sure he’ll see you when he can. Please partake of the refreshments while I go to find someone to announce you to.’
I sat down, grateful to be safely here, even if I could expect a longish wait. I waved aside the offer of the sweetmeats, though. I was far too upset to eat even the dry bread, let alone the honeyed dates — however much of a luxury Marcus would have thought them. Preserved Roman fruit is always too sweet and sticky for my taste.
The slave boy was looking at me oddly — it is not polite to spurn such hospitality — so I did allow him to pour me something to drink. Not wine, as it turned out, but water — which in general I prefer. However, this water had that unmistakable stale smell and yellow tinge which results from the current Roman fashion of storing it for months, or even years, to ‘improve the quality’. I prefer my water straight from the spring, as nature intended it, and in my anxious state I could not stomach this. I feigned a sip or two, but as soon as the page had disappeared I tiptoed over to the pool.
There was nobody in sight, and I poured the liquid guiltily away, before going back to sit uncomfortably on the bench.
And then there was nothing else to do but wait. I have grown accustomed to waiting in my life, but today I found it difficult to sit patiently. I was as restless as water on a griddle. It is conventional, of course, for an important man to make you wait a long time for an audience — the more important the man, the longer the wait, and men don’t come much more important than the pontifex. And if he was ‘closeted’ with Marcus it would be twice as long. Thanks be to the old gods of sky and stone that this second imperial messenger had left the city earlier in the day! If Commodus’s representative had been greeted by a shouting mob at the temple gates, I shuddered to think what the punishment would be — both for the city and for the unfortunate pavement-maker who’d occasioned the unrest.
I tried to compose myself, but I couldn’t help getting up from time to time to glance uneasily towards the street. I half expected the mob to come thumping at the door at any minute.
‘You do not care for our refreshments, citizen?’ A female voice behind me made me start. Had someone seen me tip away my drink? But before I could say anything the voice went on, ‘Oh, please, do not look embarrassed. I can hardly blame you. Who but my husband would greet his guests with only water and unleavened bread? The dates should be a little better — or I hope they are. I ordered them myself.’
I turned. A woman had come in through the inner door, and was standing by the shrine, looking at me with frank, kohl-fringed brown eyes, and wafting a cloud of perfume in her wake.
Chapter Eighteen
I did not need anyone to tell me that this was the high priest’s wife. Nor did one have to be a rune-reader to see how she had gained her reputation for waywardness and frippery. Not that she was necessarily extravagant or vain. What this woman visibly lacked was pietas, that most feminine of Roman virtues, compounded as it is of modesty, devotion, loyalty and reserve.