‘I thought she’d gone off with that fellow she was looking for – and if he took advantage, it was no concern of mine.’ The tone was grudging now. ‘She came to the forum in that tunic late one afternoon, asking everybody where he had gone, and trying to leave messages for him if he came back. That’s when I heard her name. “Tell him Morella wants him and she’s got the money now,” those were her very words. Well, I know the girl was simple, but boasting of money in the marketplace? That was almost asking to be set upon and robbed.’
‘And you thought that’s what had happened?’
She was about to answer when she saw the trap. Knowingly selling stolen goods is treated as theft – and though she was presumably a freewoman at least, and therefore only subject to a fine, there was a case to answer. No magistrate was likely to accept that she believed the goods had really been accidentally discovered in a hedge!
‘I told you, I thought she’d gone off,’ she said defiantly. ‘If she had money, she might have paid the fellow to let her tag along – and he might have let her do it, for a little while at least. He’d do anything for silver, from what I saw of him.’
‘I thought you said she had no money when she last spoke to you,’ the officer put in. He had sat down at his table now, and was looking searchingly at her. The focus of this enquiry had changed dramatically.
But she had an answer. She gave a crafty smile. ‘But that day she didn’t speak to me at all. She’d turned up in that tunic – far too short for her – and a great big bundle of other things as well. She didn’t need to come and look at my poor stall that day. She went and stood by the basilica – where that young man used to stand – and when it was clear he wasn’t going to come, I heard her asking people to pass the message on. Of course I would have done it for her,’ she added virtuously, ‘only I never saw him in the market any more.’
‘Nor Morella either? You didn’t think that odd?’
‘Well, I knew he’d gone to Londinium, with those acts and everything. The ones that did get chosen to go to Rome. Naturally I thought that she’d caught up with him.’
‘Can you describe this young man she tried to bribe?’ The commander was scribbling something on a piece of bark. ‘In case we need to seek confirmation of all this?’
‘Well, of course I can. Big, sandy fellow, with enormous hands. Wears an olive-coloured tunic – wonderful material, you can tell it cost the earth. Ask anyone in the forum, they’ll all say the same. The slave of that visitor from Rome with all the stripes, he was, and supposed to have a lot of influence with him. Not the sort of person you’d want to argue with. So if he’d made her sell the tunic, to pay a little more, it wouldn’t have surprised me. She had her other clothes. I told you, citizen, I bought it in good faith.’ She seemed to feel that she had given a plausible excuse.
It seemed that the garrison commander agreed with her. He had no especial interest in the fate of a peasant girl and he was clearly anxious to be rid of all of us. ‘Well, citizen, are you satisfied with that? Or shall I arrest this woman for selling stolen goods?’ He looked at me with a calculating twinkle in his eye. ‘Perhaps some sort of accommodation might be reached? It would be a valid reason for the slave to seize the article, of course, if he had reason to think that it was dishonestly obtained.’
He was offering a graceful end to this affair. I took his cue before his patience frayed. ‘If she will drop the charges she made against my slave, I will not insist on her arrest.’ I could see her looking hopeful, and I said hastily, ‘Provided that I can take the tunic with me now, that is. It may help us trace the girl. Her father is anxious and – as I think you know, Commander – my patron has an interest in the case.’
The stall-woman had looked as if she might resist my request, but the mention of my patron was enough to change her mind. She licked her lower lip. ‘You’ll pay the promised price?’
‘I think that might be an infringement of the law, until we ascertain that it was not stolen from the girl. Otherwise it is not yours to sell.’
I looked at the commander of the garrison with surprise. I had not expected him to take a moral stand over a second-hand tunic with a tear in it, however unusual it might prove to be, but his next words made it clear that he was seeking to find a compromise that would cost me nothing. ‘I think I will confiscate it temporarily, and have it sent to show His Excellence – you may not realise, woman, that he called here himself today? Concerning a body which was discovered near his house and a young woman who has disappeared.’
The woman let out a fearful shriek at this. ‘A body! So that trader did kill and rob her. I was afraid of that. But I didn’t know it, citizens, I swear by all the gods. I thought she’d gone to Londinium with the other acts.’
The commander was sharpening his pen again by now. He dipped it in the ink. ‘What other acts are these?’
‘He’s got a cart of reptiles with him – or did when he left here. And some sort of comic actor – that’s what the rumours say. They weren’t even local. His master must have seen them somewhere else and chosen them – they only came here to catch up with him. Some of the better acts round here were furious when they knew – but no doubt the chosen ones had offered bigger bribes.’
He made a note of this. ‘So if we want to find this fellow it should not be difficult . . . “accompanied by a cartload of snakes” . . .’ He sounded sceptical. ‘You haven’t any other information about him, I suppose?’
I frowned. ‘I think his name is Hirsius,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard of him before. A servant of that cousin of Marcus’s who is visiting. And it is true about the entertainment acts. Apparently the Emperor rewards variety and Lucius has been seeking out a few to take back with him to Rome. I believe they may already have reached Londinium – according to a message my patron got today.’ I frowned. ‘Though they have must have made good progress – with the baggage cart as well.’
‘Baggage?’
‘There was a wagonload of luggage too, I understand, some of it belonging to His Excellence himself. He’s hoping to catch up with it before he sails, I think – most likely at the house of the commander of the fleet, where my patron and his wife expect to stay a day or two.’
The garrison commander put down his pen and sprinkled ash on to the document to dry the ink. He smiled. ‘Of course. I have just forwarded a letter to that very house. Well, that explains it. I could send a message there to see if the girl is with the carts, but otherwise there seems little I can do, unless her father wants to bring some kind of charge?’
I thought about the coins. ‘I doubt that very much.’
He pushed away the memo that he’d been scribbling. ‘In that case, citizen, I will restore to you your slave – and you, woman, can go back to your stall. It’s almost closing time. And you will return that belt that you were given as surety. I’ll keep the tunic here until I see His Excellence. Guard!’ The fat soldier put his head round the door. ‘Show this woman and this citizen downstairs, and you can release that servant boy as well. There will be no charges.’
It was a dismissal. The woman puffed off down the stairs to close her stall up for the night, but I stood, considering. I would scarcely have time to reach the funeral guild now, and certainly I could not visit the dancing girls as well.
I turned to the commander. ‘I had another slave – I think I mentioned it? – the one who stopped the horse. He was delivering some letters to you when all this began. Do I understand that he is in the gatehouse too?’
The officer picked up an official scroll and opened it. ‘He did give me the letters, certainly, and the instructions as to where to send them to. They are already on their way. But I think he said he had another errand to perform. Something about the slaves’ guild and a funeral? He said that he would come back here when he’d accomplished it.’
So Niveus had shown some initiative at last! I was still smiling as I went back down the stairs.
Minimus was looking chagrined as they marched him out to me – as well he might. If it were not for the connection with Marcus, I was sure, both of us would have been lucky not to spend a wretched night in jail, since I was not carrying the wherewithal to pay any kind of fine – and though my toga would have saved me from the worst, I could not have bribed the warder to take special care of us.
‘I am truly sorry, master,’ he ventured finally, when we were clear of the gatehouse and standing on the road. ‘You asked me to make enquiries about whether she had sold that tunic to the girl, and when I saw she actually had it on the stall, I thought that you would want it. She did agree to sell it – till I mentioned Marcus’s name, and suddenly she changed her mind and wouldn’t let it go.’
I nodded. ‘Afraid that it would get her into trouble, I suppose, knowing that Marcus is a senior magistrate. She clearly guessed that it was stolen – she almost said as much. Do you want to go after her and pick up your belt?’ I motioned through the arch where the woman could even now be seen, waddling in dudgeon back towards her stall. ‘Before you find she’s sold it to another customer?’
I meant it as a jest, but Minimus looked alarmed. ‘I suppose I’d better go and claim it. And the horse, as well. I don’t know what the guards have done with that. They took it from me when they arrested me. I suppose they took it to the stables at the garrison.’ He looked at me ruefully, his reddish eyebrows raised. ‘But you will need an attendant, since Niveus isn’t here.’
I was amused at his assumption – derived from serving in patrician Roman households – that I must have a servant with me at all times. As a tradesman I have often walked these streets without a slave – while I was laying pavements, Junio was usually left behind to mind the shop for me. ‘I have a little business on my own account,’ I said. ‘I want to go and find the leader of those dancing girls – if I can discover which inn they’re staying at. You don’t know by any chance, I suppose – since Marcus sent you to engage their services?’
He shook his head. ‘He did not send me to find them. I don’t know where they are.’ He brightened. ‘But I’m sure that one of the soldiers could tell you, citizen – the army always know all about pretty girls like that.’
‘Then find out, when you go and ask about the horse. Do that quickly, and I can go there now.’
He frowned at me. ‘But do you still want to do that, citizen? I thought you knew all about Morella and tunic by this time.’
‘I still don’t know the most important things. Where did she get it from – since it appears she didn’t buy it from the stall – and what has happened to her since.’ I tried not to sound impatient. Junio would have worked this out at once.
Minimus said ‘Oh!’ and closed his mouth again.
‘I think it’s possible she got it from the girls – perhaps without their leader’s even knowing it. Who else would have such tunics, after all? If not, I’ll try the brothel – the girls in there might know.’
‘Do you need me to find out where the . . .?’ Minimus began, and trailed off, scarlet. ‘I’ll go and see about the horse at once. And I’ll ask that new soldier on duty on the gate about the dancers. He’s quite a friendly chap. He was the one taking those bodies to the paupers’ pit yesterday – I’ve talked to him before.’
‘That might have been a little different,’ I said. ‘You were escorting His Excellence and Lucius at the time.’ But it did not deter him, and I watched him hurry off and speak to the soldier at the gate. He must have been successful, because first a gesturing arm directed Minimus round behind the gatehouse to the stable yard, and then the guard looked up and signalled me to come forward.
I was making my way towards him – the throng was lighter now – when a sudden thought struck me, like a hammer blow.
If the plaid dress was at the villa, and the tunic on the stall, what was Morella wearing? A naked body was surely the most conspicuous kind. I closed my eyes. Of course. Why hadn’t the possibility occurred to me before? Two corpses found out on the Isca road, one of them a girl who had been ‘stripped and robbed’. And rebels who had only confessed to half of the crime, even under torture?
And this guard had been involved! I wondered what he knew. I hurried over to ask him about it, but he held up his hand as I approached.
‘Not so fast, citizen. No need to rush like that.’ He looked at me, his tanned face wrinkled in a knowing smile. ‘I hear you want to find those dancing girls? I hope you’ve got some money, then, that’s all I can say. Cost you a fortune to have just one of them.’
I smiled weakly. I was a little impatient of his teasing, but I dared not let him see – I did want the information, after all, and I needed his cooperation with the other matter too. Better to grin and bear it. ‘It isn’t for myself,’ I said. ‘It’s for . . .’ I was going to say ‘His Excellence’ but the soldier winked.
‘For a friend?’ he said. ‘Of course, it always is. Well, I’ll tell you where they’re staying, but I don’t know if they’re there. Half a mile or so along the military Aqua Sulis road you’ll find an inn. Used to be a hiring stables at one time, but now it just operates as a lodging house. Bit more extensive than a lot of them – they’ve turned the old carthouse into extra rooms. That’s where the girls are staying, I believe.’ He chuckled. ‘I wish you luck. Always supposing you can get past the dragon in charge.’
I wished, not for the first time that day, that I was carrying a purse. A little tip would not have gone amiss. ‘Thank you, soldier. And there’s another thing . . .’ I was all at once so nervous that I had to clear my throat. ‘Those rebels that you executed a day or two ago, for robbing travellers on the Isca road . . .’
This was a different matter. The friendliness had vanished all at once. ‘What about it?’ he said suspiciously, and then a look of recognition spread across his face. ‘Of course! I knew I’d seen that red-haired slave of yours before. He spoke to me that day. Only – he wasn’t accompanying you. What are you doing with His Excellence’s slave?’
I nodded. ‘It’s a long story,’ I murmured. ‘But he’s now been lent to me. He told me that he’d seen you with the rebel corpses on the road. The thing is, I believe there was a girl they were accused of having killed?’