‘He was about that age, Father, wouldn’t you have thought?’ That was Junio again. ‘Just a little younger than I am, probably. Though without his face and features I suppose it’s hard to tell. We cannot see, for instance, if he had a beard at all.’ He stroked his own cheek, a bit self-consciously. There was the very faintest hint of down upon his upper lip. I knew that he was very proud of it.
Julia put her fig down and pushed the plate aside. ‘The thing is, Libertus, what are we to do? We’ve got the body of what looks like a well-to-do young man lying in our servants’ quarters with his face smashed in. We don’t know who he was, or who his family is – or even if he came from hereabouts. Meantime, we have a very important visitor in the house. Not only a patrician, with influence at court, but a relative of Marcus’s as well. You know that Lucius Julianus is a cousin, I presume?’
I hadn’t known, but on reflection I was not surprised. I was aware that Marcus had been born and raised in Rome and that his family was an ancient one – not only very wealthy but patrician too. Marcus joked that his mother, in particular, was inclined to look down on everyone, with the possible exception of the Emperor; his own wedding to Julia had been hurried through to prevent his parents from finding out and choosing him a bride more in keeping with what they thought suitable. Julia had been married twice before, and although she brought a handsome dowry she was from provincial stock. The alliance had met with huge disapproval from Marcus’s mamma, and there had been a flurry of reproving letters by every messenger. It occurred to me that this was a potential problem, even now, with their Roman trip in prospect. ‘On his mother’s side?’ I asked.
Julia gave me a glance that would have melted steel. ‘You understand, Libertus? Lucius Julianus will go back to Rome and tell the family what has happened here. Honoria – Marcus’s mother – will blame me, of course, because I had the servants bring the body here. I believe she blames me for every problem Marcus has – you know she has never forgiven him for marrying me at all. It won’t be the easiest of visits, anyway.’ She sighed. ‘I was hoping Marcellinus would help to win her round, but now I fear that that’s impossible.’
I was about to make some flattering remark about anyone who set eyes on her loving her instantly, but she waved the platitude impatiently aside.
‘You don’t know what Honoria Aurelia is like. She was always superstitious, and she’s getting worse, it seems, now that Marcus’s father isn’t very well. Sees everything as a deliberate sign that people are conspiring with the fates to engineer the family’s downfall all the time. According to Lucius she dismissed a slave last month – sold him for almost nothing in the marketplace – because he dropped a plate of food and did not make the proper sacrifice. Said he was deliberately defying all the gods and trying to bring ill-fortune to the house.’ She shook her head. ‘It was funny when he told us, but it isn’t funny now. Think what she will make of this – at the Lemuria, too!’
It was Stygius who shuffled forward, and muttered, with a bow, ‘Then – forgive me, lady – but does Lucius have to know? He and the master have been in court all day. The news will not have reached them . . .’
He was interrupted by a dry, patrician voice. ‘And what news, pray, is that?’
We whirled round as one. Perhaps we had been too intent upon our figs and wine. Standing in the main entrance of the atrium, accompanied by his attendant bodyguard but somehow, till this moment, unobserved, was Lucius Julianus Catilius himself.
He strode across the atrium and – ignoring the rest of us as if we were not there – addressed a sketchy bow to Julia, who had risen in confusion to greet him. Junio and I had started to our feet.
‘Forgive me, lady, if I startled you.’ His cultured Latin was deliberately formal and precise. ‘Your husband will be here in just a little while. He went round with the horses – said he was going directly to the new wing of the villa to get changed – and suggested that I came in here to wait. I could not find anyone to announce that we’d arrived’ – here he allowed his eyes to dwell a fraction on the pageboy Niveus, as if to suggest that this should have been his job – ‘so I brought my bodyguard and came directly in. I hope you do not mind. I am a member of the family, after all.’ He gave her a small, condescending smile. ‘I did not expect to find anybody here.’
This was not entirely honest, I was sure. It must have taken considerable care to have entered the atrium quite so silently. I wondered how long he had been standing there, listening.
The same thought had clearly occurred to Julia. ‘Well, cousin, since you have clearly overheard us, there is no point in trying to disguise the truth from you. The fact is that there has been an unfortunate event.’ She had turned a charming crimson with embarrassment. ‘Something unpleasant has been discovered in the grounds – the worst kind of omen. My land slave was suggesting that you should be spared the worry of it, at least until we had contrived to make propitiation to the gods.’
Lucius gave a thin, tight smile. ‘I see. So Honoria Aurelia was right! She told me before I set off to visit you that she’d had a premonition that something ill-fated was likely to occur.’
Julia inclined her head. The colour had not faded from her cheeks. ‘I believe you mentioned it.’ Then – rather daringly for a married woman of her rank – she met his eyes, saying with a pretence at levity, ‘I imagine, cousin, that if one has premonitions of ill-fortune for long enough, sooner or later one will be fulfilled.’
Lucius had the grace to look discomfited at this sally. He gave a little laugh. ‘I see you have the measure of your mother-in-law, my dear. But you can rely on my help. What is the nature of this “unfortunate event”? Not a dead body, surely, at this time of year?’
It was apparently intended as a kind of mocking jest but the guess was so accurate it took us all aback. Julia said nothing. She did not need to speak. Her face had already told him the unhappy truth.
He was evidently more afraid of the Lemures than I would have guessed. He looked quite pale and shaken as he turned to Stygius. ‘This is the news that you were speaking of? The information that I didn’t have to share?’
The sudden question caught the land slave unaware. The tone had been intimidating, too – Lucius might have been talking to a dog – and Stygius was slow-thinking at the best of times. It took a little while before he faltered into speech. ‘Excellence, I meant no disrespect. The situation is an embarrassment for my master, that is all. And the mistress too, of course. We found a body dressed in peasant’s clothes, when we were clearing land. We brought it here for funeral. We don’t know who it is.’
Once again, I found I was impressed by Stygius. He thought slowly, but he thought to some effect. He had managed to give an outline which was accurate enough, but minimised drama as far as possible.
Lucius was looking much relieved. ‘A peasant? Well, that’s not too serious, I suppose.’ He turned to Julia. ‘What will you do with it? Put it on a funeral pyre at once? That would be wise, I think – dispose of it before the Lemuria begins. You can find out afterwards who the family was – if any information comes to light – and show them where you put the ashes, so they can tend the urn. Nobody could ask any more of you than to give the corpse a proper funeral – even the spirits should be satisfied.’
Julia nodded. She looked quite relieved. She would have been glad, I think, to take her lead from Lucius in this and solve the problem by cremating it – though of course the matter was more complicated than Lucius could guess. ‘You are a comfort, cousin,’ she began. ‘No doubt you are right. Stygius, go and—’ But she got no further. Marcus and his entourage were entering the room.
He had changed his toga for a coloured
synthesis
– that combination of tunic and draped material which had become his dress of choice at home. The drapes provided the dignity that a toga gives, without the inconvenience of managing those heavy, awkward folds. In fact Marcus had set a little fashion locally: these days every citizen who could afford it wore a
synthesis
at home, not only when they dined, but increasingly at other times as well. This one was pale orange. It gave him the appearance of a temple augurer, I thought, especially as he was attended by a pair of matching slaves.
When he spoke, he sounded like an augur-reader too. ‘I have just seen what is outside, in the stable block. One of the servants showed me. You are aware of it, Julia, I suppose?’
‘A peasant,’ Lucius began. ‘We were just discussing the cremation pyre.’
Marcus snorted. ‘Peasant? He’s no more a peasant than I am – though I understand that he was dressed as one. You found him, Stygius?’
Stygius, who had come to Julia’s side, waiting for his instructions, slowly turned. ‘I did, master. On that land we were clearing for this young citizen.’ He gestured towards Junio.
Lucius was looking quite astonished now. He turned to Marcus. ‘The piece of land you pointed out to me the other day? But what was the body doing over there? Surely it was a patch of forest where nobody would go?’
Marcus shrugged. ‘Somebody saw we’d cut some standing timber down, concluded that we’d finished harvesting the wood, and decided it would make a good hiding place, perhaps – not realising that we were about to clear the area completely for a building plot.’ He spoke as though he had been actively involved in felling trees himself, instead of merely giving orders that it should be done.
That would make a kind of sense, I thought, remembering the sledge of chopped wood near the stable block. Yet it was an explanation which had not occurred to me – for reasons which I hastened to express. ‘But even if there weren’t land slaves over at the site – and once you’d cut the timber there weren’t until today – we could see the area from the roundhouse all the time. During the hours of daylight, anyway.’
Junio looked mournfully at me. ‘There was one day, Father, when that was not the case. You took the whole household into town, as I recall, and we did not return to the roundhouse until dark.’
I nodded slowly. ‘Two days ago.’ The day of my painful visit to the barber, while Gwellia and the slaves went hurrying round the town, visiting the fuller to collect the laundered clothes, and making all the other last-minute preparations for today. ‘Then almost certainly that was when the deed was done.’
Junio looked thoughtful. ‘I suppose it must have been. It wouldn’t be at night. Lighted torches would be too much of a risk – anyone might see them from the roundhouse, or even from the road – and one couldn’t do without them. Anyway, what with wolves and bears and darkness, the forest is always very dangerous after dark. So I think you’re right. It must have been that day.’
I nodded. ‘And we can guess that the man who hid the body there must be a stranger in these parts.’
Lucius had been listening with a disdainful face, as if such grisly matters were beneath contempt, but he pounced like an arena lion on these words. ‘What makes you say that, citizen?’ he asked. It was the first time since he had arrived in the atrium that he had addressed a word to me, despite our collusion in the courtroom earlier. Obviously the offering in my purse had not impressed him overmuch. Now, however, his blue eyes were fixed piercingly on me, though his expression still suggested that my opinions – like myself – were unlikely to be of any great account.
‘Anybody hereabouts would know the site was being cleared, and that the body was likely to be found. If he’d visited the villa, he would certainly have heard.’ I summoned up a smile. ‘News travels like lightning in any household full of slaves.’
Lucius managed to convey, without a word, that he was unimpressed. I was tempted to point out that I had firsthand experience, but I sensed that Lucius would be even less impressed if he realised that I’d once been a slave myself. I noticed that he was studiously ignoring Junio, who had been fictitiously his servant for an hour.
‘Indeed,’ I went on, ‘look what happened in the villa here today. His Excellence had scarcely got back to the house before one of the servants had told him all about the corpse. When I arrived it was clearly common knowledge among the slaves – I believe they were laying bets about how soon we’d solve the crime – yet I don’t imagine that Julia had mentioned it to many of the staff.’
‘I was careful to say as little to them as possible.’ Julia was looking horrified.
Marcus glanced around, as if observing for the first time that the room was full of slaves. I have warned him before about his tendency to forget that they are there, silent listeners to everything that’s said and not mere items of household furniture. ‘But they have ears, I suppose.’ He waved a hand at them. ‘Be off, the lot of you. You can wait outside the door. Except you, Niveus. You can bring me another cup and a chair – and one for my cousin Lucius as well. And Stygius, you can go back and guard the corpse.’
There was a startled moment as the servants filed away.
When she was sure that only we five citizens remained Julia looked ruefully at me. ‘You mean that the whole villa will know of it by now?’
‘More than the villa, by this time, I should think. Unless you have instructed your slaves to be discreet, I imagine they will be abuzz with it and chattering to any tradesman who might call.’
She was looking stricken. ‘We had some olive oil delivered just before you came. And I sent a slave to Glevum to hire dancers for tonight.’
‘Then almost certainly the news has reached the town,’ I said. I could see that she was shaken, and I went on soothingly, ‘But anyway, as I understand it, you have sent your land slaves out to make enquiries in the area about a missing girl. You can hardly expect the matter to be secret very long – and you want the family to claim the corpse if possible.’
‘Girl?’ That was Lucius again. ‘I thought it was a youth?’
‘The land slaves supposed it was a girl at first,’ Marcus said shortly. ‘Because of the peasant dress, I suppose. However, it appears that in fact it is a male. Libertus can tell you – he discovered that.’
‘Really?’ Lucius turned to me suspiciously. ‘How did you come to be involved?’