The Fateful Day (4 page)

B
efore I could say anything at all he was leading the way back through the still half-open gate into the orchard field. I followed him, but as I glanced around I could not see anything particularly out of place. The trees – apples, walnuts, damson, sloes and pears – had just begun to sprout their new spring buds, but otherwise the branches were quite bare, making it possible to see through the tangled trellis of their twigs right to the other corner of the field, but I could see nothing unusual at all, except what looked a random pile of coloured cloth against the further wall.

Even that was not especially surprising, given that the master and the mistress were away. Most of the cloth that I could see was roughly the distinctive scarlet shade of the house uniform of Marcus’s house-slaves – except for a much smaller heap of greenish-brown a little to one side – so this was presumably drying laundry I was looking at. The diminished household that had been left behind were hardly likely to take their tunics into Glevum to be cleaned or dyed: the fullers gave no credit and the dyers even less. That small amount of laundry would be done at home, just as Gwellia always personally dyed and washed our own – except of course for togas, which required the whitening that only a professional fuller could provide.

So if a lot of odd items were being dyed to match and the result was not especially critical – which at a quick glance appeared to be the case – then what could be more natural than to spread it out to dry on the long grass beneath the trees, particularly on a windy, bright spring morning like today?

‘There’s Minimus. Can you see him? I think he’s being sick.’ Junio broke across my thoughts, indicating the direction with a thumb.

It was then I realised that the green-brown heap was Minimus – or rather his slave-tunic, which was all that I could see. He was crouching up against the high stone wall, his head bowed away from us and his shoulders heaving slightly as I watched. I hurried towards him, down one of the grassy strips between the trees – and as I grew nearer I got a clearer view – and then looked more carefully at the other pile of cloth.

What I was seeing stopped me in my tracks. There was no question now of what had happened to the missing slaves. I had been right in thinking I could see their uniforms – what I hadn’t realised was that the owners were still wearing them. The whole household of servants, what was left of them, were lying two deep in a sort of ragged line, some on their fronts and others on their backs, some with their feet towards me, others facing the other way. It was not a tidy pile. Many of them overlapped their neighbour in some way – a leg here over someone else’s shoulder there – and the variation in the famous crimson shade was occasioned not by the recent application of a dye, but by the streams of blood which had soaked into them, and which now had dried in random patches of a darker hue.

It was not hard to see where all this blood had issued from. The heads were missing. Every one of them had clearly been hacked off at the neck. Some of the bodies had been cruelly stabbed as well (several in the back, I noticed), but some corpses appeared to bear no other mark. There must have been a dozen or so in all – surely the whole of the small staff that Marcus left behind: male and female, young and old, kitchen slaves and pages, even the amanuensis and the steward (easily distinguishable by their longer robes) all jumbled together in this macabre equality of death.

I turned to Minimus, still retching in the grass. He knelt up to greet me, ashen-faced and with an effort at a sickly smile. ‘Master! I’m sorry. I should have come to you …’

I held up a hand to silence him. ‘I’m not surprised this has affected you. It would take a man without a heart not to react to this …’

He gulped. ‘That boy there – the second smallest one – I knew him, I am sure. I helped to train him when he first arrived. He was going to be page, but in the end they made him kitchen-boy. His name’s Pauvrissimus. I recognise him from that scar there on his arm where he tripped and fell into the brazier one day.’ He seemed to feel that he was showing disrespect, so he put one still-shaking hand against the wall and pulled himself upright. ‘And that big, hulking one beside him, I am almost sure, is the second-ranking cook who used to do the baking for the house.’

I nodded. I had forgotten that these people would be personally known to my red-headed slave. ‘I’m sorry you had to find this on your own,’ I said. ‘What made you come into the orchard anyway?’

‘I’d already done as the young master said – looked into the slave quarters and all the other outbuildings and sheds. But there wasn’t anyone …’ he tailed off incoherently, gazing at me with a supplicating look upon his face.

I tried to help him. ‘So you decided to come and have a look round the estate?’

Another anguished glance. ‘Well, not exactly that. You see, I noticed that the egg basket was gone …’

I found that I was staring at him. So was Junio. ‘The egg basket?’ I echoed.

He nodded. ‘The basket that’s used for collecting the eggs. It hangs on the wall inside the servants’ sleeping-room – at least, that’s where it was kept when I belonged to Marcus.’ It was the first long utterance he had managed since we’d found him here.

‘It was clever of you to have noticed it was gone,’ I said gently. ‘I certainly hadn’t noticed it myself.’ Although, now he mentioned it, I had a recollection of an empty hook beside the door and a faint mark on the wall where something had once hung.

Minimus was still gasping, but I’d encouraged him. ‘Pauvrissimus used to take it out to get the eggs first thing in the morning.’ He glanced at the headless corpses, and glanced away again. ‘Well, I thought that’s what he’d done. You wouldn’t take the basket if you weren’t collecting eggs. And, since there wasn’t any poultry in the yard, I thought they must have been let out underneath the trees to scratch for worms and things – that’s what they always used to do when I was here – though it’s a bit early in the season. I know the chickens that you keep at home aren’t really laying yet. But Marcus breeds several var-ieties of hens, as well as ducks and geese – on purpose to get eggs as long as possible. So I came into the orchard …’ He shook his head again. ‘Poor Pauvrissimus! Who did this awful thing? And what’s happened to their heads?’

‘I don’t know,’ I told him. ‘But I’m anxious to find out. I’ll discover who did this to your friend, I promise you. And if you can bear to look again at the other bodies, it is even possible that you can help.’

‘Me?’ Minimus turned a chalk-white face to me. ‘If it will help to catch the killer, I’d do a great deal more than that.’

‘Then look at them and tell me – you know that Marcus only left a tiny indoor staff behind, just enough to keep the villa open while he was away. Apart from the steward and the amanuensis, whom I recognise myself, do you think that this is all of them?’

Minimus swallowed hard and forced himself to look at the pile of headless bodies that used to be his friends. ‘It is hard to tell exactly who is who – and there’s certain to be some people who were purchased when I’d left – but most of them I’m fairly certain of. That little boy beside Pauvrissimus was a trainee page, I think, here to open the door and deal with visitors. That one there’s the general messenger, and that’s the girl that used to mend the linen and do general sewing work. That couple with the cook will be the other kitchen slaves – someone has to feed the household and the land-slaves too – and that fat lad with them is the boy who fetches fuel to feed the cooking stoves and things.’ He considered for a moment. ‘The other general slaves I’m not really sure about. There’d be three or four to clean the villa, I suppose. It looks as though His Excellence has ordered an effort to do that while he’s away – someone has been scrubbing out the storage vats, I see, and there’ll be all the household cutlery and ornaments to clean, so he’ll have left sufficient staff to do it properly. I didn’t have a lot of contact with the more menial staff, so I would not necessarily know them anyway, especially now there is no face to recognise.’ He wrinkled up his nose. ‘The only thing I can’t see is a gatekeeper … I know that there were changes after I had gone, but there’s no one left who looks the build for that.’

I found myself exchanging glances with my son. There was a little silence.

‘Ah, the gatekeeper,’ Junio said, at last. ‘My father’s already found him, so he’s accounted for. It seems that he was in his cell, but dead, when we came in. That is why he didn’t answer us.’

Minimus was frowning. ‘But there should be two of them. One for the back gate as well as for the front.’

I glanced across at Junio, who raised his brows at me, ‘Even when the master is away?’ I asked my little slave.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t think Marcus would have gone and left the back gate unguarded, or permanently locked. All the land-slaves have to come and go that way – if only to deliver crops or tend the animals.’

I stared at him. Of course, the lad was right. In fact, while the owner of the villa was in Rome and few visitors of rank were liable to call, the rear entrance was probably the most important and frequented one. Marcus’s gatekeepers were invariably selected for their strength and their ability to frighten off unwelcome visitors, so one would expect to find some muscular he-bear of a slave, just like the keeper of the other gate. I knew that my patron had bought a new one, fairly recently. Yet Minimus was right again – there was no obvious candidate among the dead.

Junio was obviously thinking the same thing. ‘So there is someone missing?’ he observed to me. ‘Or we assume there is. It may be that his body is lying somewhere else – if he let in the killers inadvertently. But then, you’d think, the land-slaves would have known.’

I nodded. ‘I think I’d better go and have another word with them. They would know who was on duty at the rear gate – yesterday, I think it must have been. And perhaps they can explain how this could happen here while they remain oblivious of it.’

‘And I shall come with you,’ Junio declared. ‘Even if you’re riding on the mule and I’m obliged to walk. It isn’t wise for anyone to go down there alone in case the killer is still somewhere roaming the estate. Minimus can run back home and tell them what’s occurred and reassure them that you are safe and well. Mother will be really worrying by now.’

I nodded. ‘Very well. I’m tempted to think that one of us should stay to keep a watch on these.’ I gestured to the headless bodies on the ground. ‘But nothing that we do will help these people now. And if the killer’s still about it might be dangerous for us. So we’ll go back through the villa and do as you suggest.’

We retraced our steps in silence, all of us listening, wary and alert, fearing to hear noises or stumble on some new atrocity. By common consent we skirted round the house, taking the route out through the storage yard, and by and by we found ourselves at the front gate again.

Junio glanced at me, then at the gatehouse cell. I nodded. He motioned to the slave-boy not to follow him, then pushed the door open and went inside. He came out looking shaken.

‘Still there, then?’ I enquired.

He made a little gesture of horrified assent. ‘I see what you mean about the chains around the hands,’ he said. ‘It’s obviously murder and not a suicide. Just another one to add to our criminal’s account.’

‘But there’s Arlina, anyway,’ I murmured with relief, rushing through the gate to fondle my old mule. ‘At least she’s safe and well. I was beginning to fear that someone would have stolen her.’ I undid the rope that tethered her. ‘I’ll get on and ride. I’ll be all right alone. You two go back together. It’s more dangerous on foot.’

Minimus looked beseechingly at me as I hoisted myself up onto the saddle on Arlina’s bony back. ‘Master, it’s not my place to interrupt, but may I speak to you?’

I smiled. ‘It seems you’re speaking! What is it you want?’

‘If you’re going to find the killer of Pauvrissimus,’ he said, ‘please take me with you, master. You can even take me to sit up on the mule. I am small enough for both of us to ride, and we’ll get there much more quickly than if someone has to walk.’

I glanced at Junio. ‘The boy has already had a fearful shock today. Perhaps it would be better …’ I was about to say, ‘for him to go straight home’, but Junio interrupted.

‘If anyone is going to travel on the lane alone, it should be me,’ he said. ‘But if I think you two have gone too long, I shall bring Maximus and come and look for you. And I’ll bring the wood-axe with me, just in case!’ He waited till Minimus had climbed up ahead of me, then he smacked Arlina’s rump and turned away in the direction of our homes.

I found myself bumping down the lane again towards the prospective vineyard where the land-slaves were.

T
he chief land-slave saw us coming down the lane. He abandoned his view-point position on a high point of the field and called out in surprise, ‘Why citizen, I see you’re here again! But be assured, we’ve not been idle while you were away. We’ve started digging the trenches for the vines. I’ll show you, if you wish!’ The undertone of mocking half-contempt was, as usual, barely concealed by the outward courtesy. ‘Come down to the enclosure gate and I will let you in.’

I ignored this invitation. I dismounted where I was and went directly over to the boundary wall, leaving Minimus to tether up the mule. ‘Never mind the vines,’ I shouted back. ‘I’ve more important things than vineyards to discuss with you.’

He must have realised that something was afoot because the carefully adopted fake-attentive smile faded from his lean, tanned features instantly. He positively scurried across the field to meet me where I was and when he spoke his manner was quite different from before. ‘Why, whatever is it, citizen?’ For the first time in our acquaintance he looked straight into my eyes. ‘Has something happened to the master while he’s been overseas?’ He saw that I was beginning to shake my head, denying this, and before I could say anything, he’d made another guess. ‘Or has the mistress perished giving birth to the new child? It’s something serious, I can see that from your face.’

‘It’s not what happened to your owners, it’s what has happened here.’ I had to hold my hand up, even then, to silence him before he started to interrupt again. ‘But before you ask me questions, there’s one I have for you. Think carefully before you answer it – much may depend on what you tell me now. Did anything strike you as unusual last night when you went back home to the main estate again?’

He was frowning. ‘But we didn’t! Surely you must have been aware of that?’

‘Didn’t what?’ I was as perplexed as he appeared to be. He was still staring at me in bewilderment, so I said, to make it clearer, ‘What was it that you didn’t do?’

‘Go back to the main estate last night!’ he said, as if this were the strangest notion in the world. ‘Even since that message was delivered two days or more ago, none of us land-slaves has been back at all.’

‘Message? What message?’ I was beginning to sound like Echo in the myth. ‘I didn’t know there had been any message to the house.’

He gave me a sly grin. ‘Then you’re not as much in the master’s confidence as I supposed you were. Oh, indeed there was a message, citizen. A whole great scroll of it. We had strict instructions. There’s a disused farmhouse here and we were to sleep in that till they had finished in the villa – even the animals were moved down here meanwhile.’

I nodded. Obviously the cleaning operations had been Marcus’s idea – that was only what one might expect. But moving all the land-slaves out was rather radical, and had obviously led to the slaughter of the indoor staff. ‘So you aren’t even using the courtyard barns down there?’ I persisted. I was remembering the empty stalls and stock enclosures at the rear of the villa. I should have realised that it was unusual, but I had been too anxious about the missing slaves to really take in the significance.

‘Not at the moment, citizen.’

‘But why not? Isn’t that what you generally do? Even if this great cleaning spree is taking place, you wouldn’t hinder it. And the outbuildings at the villa are in much better repair.’

‘We weren’t wanted at the main estate, tending the creatures and getting in the way, and this arrangement made things more convenient. Or so the master thought, apparently – though, of course, in fact, it made a lot of extra work for us.’

I waved away this piece of grumbling. ‘Convenient for what?’

He was edging towards that former mocking air again. ‘For seeing to the animals, citizen, of course. Even during this season there is lots of work to do, especially when you’re caring for the new kids and lambs and calves.’ He gazed at me and seemed to realise that I really was bemused. ‘There are empty barns and stables here that are quite usable. Plus, there is a chicken coop or two, and quite a nice enclosure for the goats – the whole place was a working farm till recently. You’re right, of course. Several of the buildings were in a dreadful state. But I’ve had such labour as I could afford doing their best to mend them while we moved the stock – and I’m glad to say that everything’s a little better now.’ He stopped and looked at me triumphantly.

He was obviously seeking to be as helpful as possible, but I still had no idea what this was all about. However, a suspicion had begun to dawn on me. ‘Never mind the arrangements for the animals. Who was it decided that you should stay up here?’

He took a small step backwards in surprise. ‘It was the master’s orders. I thought I’d told you that.’ He had adopted a weary, patient tone, as if talking to a failing intellect. ‘He sent this message several days ago saying that on his travels he had found a house in Gaul and all the precious objects in the villa here were to be packed up and crated and sent over to him there.’

I boggled at him. ‘So he’s closing down the villa?’

‘Not immediately, citizen, I think. I understand he hopes to come here now and then, if only to see this vineyard that he wants so much. But in the end, perhaps. It would not affect his role as magistrate – he still has a smart apartment in the town.’

‘Of course,’ I murmured. ‘And a fine house in Corinium as well. But he’s devoted to this villa. And I know he planned to pass it to his son when he’s of age. Why would he part with it?’

He acknowledged this information with a little bow. ‘Perhaps he thinks that this new place he’s found would make a sort of halfway house where he can stay if he is travelling more frequently to and fro from Rome, and obviously that’s something that he intends to do.’ He gave me a knowing grin. ‘Not surprising now his friend’s the Emperor. But I thought you would have known all this in any case. Marcus always seems to tell you everything.’

I looked thoughtfully at him. In principle, the thing was not impossible. My patron was given to sudden whims like this, very often not thought through in any detail – as witness the very vineyards we were looking at, or his one-time enthusiasm for those neatly matching pairs of slaves. And it would certainly explain the missing items from the house. I could see why the overseer had not questioned it.

But it did not explain what had happened to the slaves. I shook my head. ‘You are right. I hadn’t heard,’ I told him, soberly. ‘And I’m not sure that I believe it now. You are quite sure that the message was from Marcus Septimus?’

He stared at me as though I were insane. ‘I’m absolutely certain, citizen. I saw the scroll myself.’

‘And you could read it?’ I enquired, genuinely impressed. One does not expect land-slaves, even senior ones like this, to be literate at all. Such skills are not required in the fields and few owners go to the expense of teaching them, though occasional bright individuals do contrive to teach themselves by studying known inscriptions on public monuments, learning to decipher the letters bit by bit.

But the overseer was not one of these exceptions, it appeared.

He looked at me, abashed. ‘Well, not exactly, citizen. I can make out a word or two of course, but it takes me quite a time. The steward read it to us and handed it around to let us look at it. It’s what he always does. He would not have made it up, I’m sure.’ He brightened. ‘Anyway, I recognised the seal. It was the master’s, I am positive of that. And the message even listed all the things that had to go … which stools and statues and which ornaments. Who else but His Excellence could know details like that …?’ He saw my face and trailed off in dismay. ‘Oh, I suppose the steward would. You really think the letter was a fake? So … there’s been some kind of robbery? Is that what you believe?’

I nodded. ‘Among several other crimes!’ I said. ‘And robbery is perhaps the least of them.’

He made a doubtful face. ‘Well, I can’t believe the steward was involved in it,’ he said. ‘Though I suppose that things look rather bad for him. But I’m sure the message said exactly what he claimed. He was as irritated as the rest of us at all the extra work that was required. And I can’t believe it was a forgery. The steward’s been with Marcus Septimus for years. How could he be deceived? Wouldn’t he know the handwriting and seal? But if you doubt him – and you obviously do – why don’t you go and ask him to produce the scroll?’

‘I’m very much afraid—’ I had begun to say, but he was rushing on.

‘That it will have been sent back with another message written crosswise – as a palimpsest? I know that sometimes happens, but not this time, I don’t think. I’m sure that he’s still got the scroll exactly as it came. He was using it as an inventory of items to be sent. And he can hardly refuse you if you ask for it – he’ll know you are in our master’s confidence – and then you can read and judge it for yourself.’ He stopped and gave me a sudden, startled look. ‘Oh, dear gods! He’s not gone missing too? Is that why you’ve come down here to ask me this? You said that much depended on what I had to say. You think he’s guilty of arranging this?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know what to think. But the steward isn’t missing. He is there all right. And so are the others. Or what is left of them.’

‘What is left of them?’ All the swagger left him suddenly, and the swarthy face was white beneath the tan. ‘You can’t mean that they’re dead. The household slaves? Surely not all of them.’

‘I think so, though I don’t know exactly how many indoor slaves there were,’ I said. ‘But there were a dozen bodies in the orchard, by my reckoning.’

He did a calculation on his hands. ‘I make it fourteen with the gatekeepers,’ he said.

‘They were not included,’ I replied.

‘Then that would be the whole of the domestic staff.’ He gulped, seeming suddenly to realise the dreadful force of this. ‘All twelve of them? Dear Jupiter! What happened? Was there poison in something they ate? It must have been some kind of accident.’ He looked into my face again, saw the truth and said with disbelief, ‘Not intruders, surely? There are armed men always watching at the villa gates! No one could get in and simply murder everyone.’

There was no kind way to tell him, so I did not try to mask the brutal facts. ‘But someone did. This was no accident, I fear. All the heads were missing – hacked off the neck.’ I gestured to Minimus, who – having tethered up the mule – was now waiting patiently a little further on. ‘And these were certainly the bodies of the indoor staff. My own slave used to work at the villa and he recognised a few.’

The chief land-slave gawped at me. ‘So it was obviously murder?’

‘Of the most callous kind,’ I said. ‘Some of them were clearly stabbed as well – so they might have been dead or dying before the final blow.’

He had stopped talking now, and was digesting this. ‘And the gatekeepers weren’t with them? What does that suggest? I suppose they could be killers – they are strong enough, especially combined. Though I wouldn’t for a moment have thought that of them.’ He shook his head. ‘And I’m absolutely certain they could not have sent the scroll. Neither of them ever learned to read a single word, let alone write one, which is the harder skill.’

‘The guard from the front gate is accounted for!’ I said. ‘He wasn’t with the others. He was hanging in his cell. Not by his own hand, if I am any judge.’ I explained what I had seen. ‘And it’s possible we’ll find the body of the other one somewhere.’

My listener was as shaken as Minimus had been. ‘You think it’s an attack against the household then? And these …?’ He nodded towards his land-slaves, still working in the field, who were occasionally glancing towards us as they dug, but were oblivious – as yet – of what awaited them at home. ‘You think that they’ll be next?’

He sounded so concerned about his men that I was rather touched. I wanted to reassure him a little, if I could. I shook my head. ‘I doubt it very much,’ I said, although in fact I wasn’t sure of this at all. ‘Someone’s taken trouble to have you moved away.’

He nodded. ‘Probably because we’re generally fit and muscular. Working outside on the land all day every day for years, does build you up a bit.’ He said it with some pride. ‘We’d be a great deal more difficult to overcome than that soft-handed lot who only work indoors, to say nothing of the fact that there are far more of us. Especially at the moment, with the master gone away. It does not take many to look after the house, but – as I said before – this is a very busy season on the farm. The crops and animals need tending just the same and there are almost as many land-slaves as there ever were. Marcus had more sense than to dispose of most of us.’

I looked around the field. There must have been thirty or forty men at work. ‘So this is all of them?’

‘Dear gods! Of course it’s not!’ He looked at me appalled. ‘I’d forgotten that. I have sent another half a dozen up there to the estate.’ He raised an apologetic brow at me. ‘I know that my instructions did not allow for that, but I had to do something useful with them and I thought there’d be no harm. Just some of the youngest and the oldest who couldn’t dig all day. I sent them to do slightly lighter jobs – pruning, mending hedges and that sort of thing – though they’re not working near the villa, I made sure of that.’ He gazed into my face. ‘You think that something awful might have befallen them, as well?’

‘I doubt it,’ I told him. ‘I think all this happened yesterday. But perhaps we should go up there and see, in any case.’ He was looking so stricken that I was moved to add, ‘If they were working nearer to the villa at the time, it is possible that they have useful information to impart – for instance, if any tradesmen or visitors arrived, at the back gate in particular. As it happened, I saw somebody myself, some sort of patrician in a travelling coach. But I think the slaughter had already taken place, because I know the caller got no answer at the gate.’

My efforts to divert his thoughts had been successful, it appeared. He frowned. ‘Who was that, I wonder. Someone from abroad? All Marcus’s acquaintances know that he’s away.’ He raised a brow at me. ‘Maybe the owner of that house in Gaul?’