The Chariots of Calyx (18 page)

There are grain stores in Glevum, of course – any large city has a need for bread and flour – but nothing I had seen before prepared me for the scale of this. It was an enormous building, as of course it would have to be: the lands around Londinium are not suitable for growing corn, and every grain of it has to be imported and stored somewhere. The warehouse stood on its own wharf, where a contingent of slaves under the supervision of a bad-tempered soldier with a lash were struggling to move heavy sacks of grain on to a wide, flat-bottomed boat alongside. Further along, another lesser boat was being loaded with smaller sacks.

‘Army rations,’ the bargemaster said, with the air of one long familiar with the river and its ways. ‘One and a half thousand troops in the Londinium fort.’ He spat contemptuously into the water. ‘Most of them the governor’s personal guard. But there’s another section – town watch they call themselves – and they’ve got their beaks in everything, mostly on behalf of the army
procurator
, so naturally the best of the grain crop goes to them. Not like the likes of us. Won’t find
them
having to pay three times the proper price for a sack of corn, and then finding when they get it home it’s full of weevils, or so damp that it is half rotted before they open it.’

I looked at him questioningly. Bargemasters are famously experts on any subject you care to mention – even I had heard that – but this man seemed to speak with personal feeling.

‘Haven’t there been edicts to control the price of corn?’

‘Oh, there are supposed to be. But only up to a certain quantity. If you need more than that, you have to pay whatever they are asking. The official price is a waste of time – first sign of a wet season, and it goes shooting up like a ballista.’ He spat again. ‘My sister’s husband has a baker’s shop, a very up-to-date affair, with two ovens, three boys to help him and his own donkey-mill as well. In a good place too, just east of Government House – just where all the minor officials have their accommodation. You would suppose, wouldn’t you, that a man like that would do a splendid trade?’

He barely waited for my agreement.

‘My father thought so anyway, when he arranged the match for her. But with the price of grain – wheat, barley, rye, it’s all the same – the family has been close to starving more than once. Men will only pay so much for a loaf of bread, whatever the price of grain, and when half of
that
turns out to be useless, there’s no room for profit.’

He turned away and began barking orders to his men. As if by magic half the blades stopped beating and instead dropped, like a single wounded insect, into the water, the steering slave strained at his oar, and the barge moved smoothly up beside the wharf. The soldier with the lash came belligerently over, and then, seeing the governor’s pennant flying behind us, clearly thought better of it and hurried off to find somebody official to welcome us ashore.

The man who did so was a small, pale individual, thin as a blade of corn himself, with a fringe of faded sandy hair around his balding head. He was dressed in an amber-coloured tunic of fine wool, with a good cloak and leather leggings, and was clearly a man of some substance; possibly even a citizen, despite the dress. There was a
pilleus
, a freeman’s cap, tucked into his belt, and freeborn men in any substantial city these days earn the distinction of citizenship simply by being born within the walls. He came towards us bowing frantically and looked (as he must have been) astonished when he found that the only occupant of the imperial barge was an elderly Celt in a travel-stained toga.

He recovered hastily. ‘Citizen, to what do we owe the honour?’ He had a habit of pressing the ends of his long thin fingers together as he spoke, and bowing over them like a temple priest. ‘I am the chief clerk of stores and civil overseer for this granary. The governor has sent you here today? Is there some problem with the imperial stores? If so . . .’ His pale eyes flickered nervously to the official pennant as he spoke.

‘Nothing of that kind at all,’ I murmured soothingly. ‘It is merely that I should like to see over the granary. There are one or two unresolved enquiries as a result of Caius Monnius’ death.’

I tried to keep my reply deliberately vague, while sounding as efficient as possible. If the truth were told, I had very little idea myself what I hoped to learn from this visit – except perhaps to understand the office of
frumentarius
a little better, and discover what kind of service Eppaticus might have provided, for Monnius to owe him five thousand
denarii
. Or, to put it another way, what kind of underhand activity it was that had sent him bolting like a startled carriage horse at the mere mention of Monnius’ murder.

If I had intended to reassure the overseer, I had not succeeded. The pale eyes were flickering like candles in a gale, and he pressed his thin fingers so hard together that the tips went white. Nonetheless he went through the motions of welcome. ‘Of course, of course. A terrible business, the death of Monnius. We were all most shocked to hear it. Now, Mightiness, if you wish to look over the granary . . .?’ He waited while I made my way ashore, with the assistance of Junio and the bargemaster, and then added, ‘Where, exactly, would you care to begin?’

As I know rather less about Roman granaries than I know about boats, this was a difficult question to answer. At my
oppidum
when I was young, we simply dried the rye on wooden racks, threshed it, and kept the resultant grain in a pit, with prickled branches set around it to keep off the mice. I said, with as much authority as I could muster, ‘Let us start from the beginning. Show me where the corn comes in, and what you do with it.’

That seemed to worry him still more, but he began to gabble a description, leading the way as he did so. ‘This is the main quay – at harvest it is full of grain barges. They bring it down from some of the shallower rivers by canoe, and offload it into barges when they meet the main waterway. Cheaper than road transport, and besides, Caius Monnius arranged for drying houses to be built on the riverbank, so that even if the weather is bad or the corn is green it can be dried out and used.’

I nodded. ‘I had heard that.’

The warehouse manager pressed his fingers together again. ‘They have proved their worth, this year alone. Some of the harvests in the east would have been wholly spoiled by the rains. And once the corn is dried, of course, it keeps much better too. Then, even out of season, people can come here and buy from us. With the kilns we have grain all year round. Much more efficient than it used to be. But still half the cost is transport, as I expect you know.’

I was thinking about that five thousand
denarii
. ‘Do farmers transport the goods at their own cost?’

For the first time, he smiled. A thin little ghost of a smile, as if the idea pleased him. ‘It all depends. Some of this grain is tax corn, collected by the government – that’s used for the army, in general. Then on some large estates we have an outright option on the whole crop every year, and of course the
procurator
owns many farms himself, and in those cases, obviously, there is no charge for transport and drying. If it is a smaller man with just a field or two, then he will bring the corn here at his own expense, and pay to put it in the drying kilns.’

‘Or apply for a compulsory loan to build his own?’

‘As you say, citizen.’

‘It is a wonder he chooses to sell his corn at all,’ I said.

He smiled again. ‘But of course, citizen, he has to pay his land taxes. In coin. So he is forced to bring his goods to market to earn the money.’

‘Very well,’ I said, impressed by the ruthlessness of his logic. ‘So the grain arrives here. What happens to it then?’

He led the way, up and down ladders and in and out of rooms heavy with grain dust, showing us how the grain was barrowed into large storage areas, and raked constantly to keep it dry and turned.

‘Here you are, you see, citizen,’ he said proudly, as we reached a central court. ‘This is the loading area.’ A number of wooden channels, with hatches, stood around the walls, and at one of them two slaves were holding a wide-mouthed bag. The shutter opened and a waterfall of golden grain streamed down the chute and into the sack. One of them shouted something, there was a sound of hand-wheels turning and the shutter closed again, cutting off the stream of corn just as the top of the bag was reached. The two slaves dragged the sack away, another began sewing up the top with a bronze needle, and the whole operation began again. An overseer with an abacus was counting off the sacks as they were completed.

‘About five
mobius
-fuls to fill a sack that size,’ our guide announced, indicating one of the corn measures hanging on the wall. ‘Worth about twenty
denarii
at this time of year, though the price seems to be going up all the time. That’s good news for us, of course. Some people want less than a sackful, and others more. We sell to bakers, market traders, large city households – and to the army, too, of course. It is shipped out again by river, or loaded on to waggons at the back. We are just inside the town defences here, but we have our own entrance through the eastern wall.’

‘This is important business then?’ I said, impressed by the idea of a private gate.

He preened. ‘One of the most important in the city. Some of our grain is even exported to Rome. Now, I don’t think there is anything else I can show you, gentlemen?’

I bent down to pick up a few seeds of scattered grain. They were different in size and shape, and one of them was spongy to the touch. ‘Why are there several different chutes?’ I asked, looking at the wooden channel through which the corn was pouring again.

‘Each grain comes down from a different storage area,’ he explained. ‘This one is spelt and rye, that one is barley, and so on. Spelt is the easiest to store – it has to be roasted before it can be threshed, and so it never rots. Of course that’s less of a problem now, thanks to Monnius’ drying floors.’

He led the way outside, and waved a hand. ‘Oh, and Monnius recently began a scheme to deal in hay – there is quite a market for it as winter fodder for horses. That is stored in the warehouse over there. It has been a good investment – we are quite close to one of the racing stables here, and they are pleased to have it, as well as their usual grain. We have even sold hay back once or twice to some of the farmers we bought it from. At a profit, of course.’ He gave me that thin smile again. ‘That is all, citizen, unless you wish to see my office? It is through this door, although there is nothing to see.’

There might, of course, have been much to learn if I’d had time to examine in detail all the documents stacked, or stored in pots, around the walls. Invoices, lists, records, orders – scribbled on bark, scratched on wax or inscribed with elaborate care on vellum scrolls – the office was a mass of documents. There was another abacus, and a steelyard, too, with a series of little weights beside it.

‘For corn?’ I asked, surprised. The weigh pans looked too small.

He gave me a pitying glance. ‘For weighing money, citizen. In a city this size there are always lots of strange coins in circulation. Egyptian, Greek – all sorts of things. People even take shavings off imperial coins and melt them down. I always have my banker weigh the coins we receive to make sure they contain the right quantity of silver. Or of gold, of course. Sometimes the sums involved are very large.’

As much as five thousand
denarii
, I wondered. That decided me. I asked the question that had been on my lips all morning. ‘Do you ever have dealings with a man called Eppaticus?’

He did not start, or blush, or falter. Instead he became unnaturally still. The only movement was in the narrow fingers, pressing on each other harder than ever. At last he said, ‘I believe I have heard the name, citizen. Though I myself have never had the pleasure . . . I will glance through my records for you, if you wish.’

‘If you would be so kind,’ I said, but knew that it was useless. There were so many records in that office, a man could search there for a year and find nothing – especially if it was something he did not want to find. But there was nothing else to be gained here, and there were several other warehouses. I allowed myself to be guided back towards the barge, where my boatman was waiting for me. The smaller boat had loaded up and gone, I noticed, and the larger one was almost ready to leave as well. I would have to hurry if we were to clear the quay without hindering commerce.

The warehouse official watched me teeter up the plank and take my place on the seat, his face wreathed in smiles now. ‘Farewell, citizen. I hope we have been of service. And now, if you will excuse me, I have a customer.’ He hurried off in the direction of a tall man in a long cloak who had just strolled on to the quay, and a moment later they were walking off together, deep in conversation.

As we pulled away from the quay I glanced at the cloaked figure, and in the same instant he glanced back at me. We both reacted together. He turned abruptly and began to walk away. Boat or no boat, I jumped to my feet.

‘Back!’ I shouted to the bargemaster. ‘Take me back there at once!’

He raised a shaggy eyebrow, but he barked out the order. The oarsmen backed their oars, and slowly – infinitely slowly it seemed to me – the boat slowed, then turned about on itself and began to inch back towards the shore. The bargemaster looked at me quizzically. ‘You know that fellow, citizen?’

‘I don’t know him exactly. I have never spoken to him, but I have seen him before. I wonder what he is doing here so soon. He must have made great efforts to get here.’

I glanced at Junio. He was gazing at the shore with a kind of rapt excitement. ‘It
is
him, isn’t it, master?’

‘That’s him,’ I said. A tall, thin, greying man with a crooked nose and thin cruel slit of a smile. The last time I had seen him he was talking to the trainer of the Blues – yesterday morning in Verulamium.

I am not a young man, and I was stiff from my battering journey of the day before, but as soon as the barge touched the quay I was on my feet, and I was down the plank almost before the bargemaster had time to lay it for me.